Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room

Hail and Farewell

Jeff Cohen

So that was it. We hope you liked it.

This is the 3464th post on HEY THERE'S A DEAD GUY IN THE LIVING ROOM, and unless someone else parachutes in and decides to add some thoughts, it is the last. We've had quite a good run here but it's time to shut off the lights and lock the doors before we stop saying anything anyone wants to hear.

For me DEAD GUY has been any number of things. It started when Deni Dietz and I defected from Murderati a long, long time ago and thought we'd start our own blog, but we didn't want to examine crime fiction strictly from an author's point of view. So we recruited editors, publishers, readers, librarians, reviewers, agents and booksellers, among others, to provide perspective we as writers couldn't offer. 

I'll continue to post blogs every now and again (look next Tuesday for sure) and hope you'll look for those moments, but as for DEAD GUY, this is the end of the line, and that's because we have all agreed it's better to go out while we're still wanted and not overstay our welcome.

But it wasn't all about publishing. The rule among us at DEAD GUY was that there were no rules. If you wanted to post about your section of the crime fiction world, great. If not, go for it. I have personally posted about digitizing my vinyl record collection, interviewed my daughter, had my dog write a guest post, talked about my health issues (ad nauseam), ranted about having to master barre chords, introduced a pseudonym, shamelessly promoted my work, bragged about blurbs, discussed the importance of making attractive letters when filling in a crossword puzzle, mentioned comedians I especially admire and occasionally made dives into such popular subjects as religion and politics. I recall once explaining how to deal with the atheist on your Christmas card list.

This blog has been more than a simple repository for my random thoughts. I've made good friends here. I've managed to blow off steam or express emotional truths when I had to. It served as a steam valve when I needed it. And a couple of times it served to let me write silly song lyrics. 

The most gratifying part of the weekly post was to connect with those who decided to visit us here. Hearing from readers and other writers, among many others, was a great comfort and sometimes an ego stroke when it was most needed. Writers write because we want to communicate something. Knowing that people were taking notice was a very large help at times.

For me the schedule forced me to write whether I had a great idea in mind or not. Some of my favorite posts were those that came when I was backed against a deadline wall. 

Everyone who has ever posted here will tell you that coming up with a post every week could be a trial. It's not easy to keep going and not repeat oneself. There have been nights that I've sat here looking at a blank screen for an hour wondering what would appear on the blog page at 12:00 a.m. that Monday. The closest I've ever come to believing in "Writer's Block" has been related to these posts. But I still don't believe.

The people with whom I've been part of DEAD GUY are amazing, smart, funny, warm and dedicated. I am grateful and honored to have been associated with each and all of them. I won't mention all the names here because I'm certain to forget some and that would bother me deeply even if it wouldn't rankle those I failed to cite. But assume if you've read a post here and it wasn't one of mine that it was written by someone I admire greatly, someone who inspires awe in me. I thank each of them. 

For those who have chosen to check in here every day or every week or once a year, we can't possibly thank you enough. It has been wonderful being part of your lives. Don't mourn the DEAD GUY. We stopped because we didn't want to disappoint you. You deserve our best. We hope we've given it to you. Thanks for everything.

 

 

Oh. And pitchers and catchers report in 44 days.

End of an era

I had it all planned out, at least in my head. All the goodbyes, all the thank-yous, all the don't-lose-touches. But now the moment has come, my mind is blank and my fingers are hovering over the keyboard without the smallest idea what I'm going to say. Nothing new there, then.

Let's begin at the beginning. It's a little over ten years since I was invited to join a team of bloggers who each contributed a weekly post to a blog called Hey, There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room. My role in the chain which linked the progress of crime fiction from idea to bookshelf was publisher, because at the time I was proprietor, managing editor, filing clerk, envelope stuffer and chief bottlewasher of a tiny publishing company specializing in crime fiction by new authors.

At the time, my little enterprise had recently spread its wings; a distributor in the USA had taken us on, and our books were set to reach a wider audience. I don't think it's entirely coincidental that shortly after I joined the Dead Guy team (as I began affectionately to call it) we scored our two biggest sellers in the US. It helped that they were great books, of course, but getting out there and waving our flag a little must have had something to do with it. So, thank you to anyone and everyone who made a contribution to that challenging, fulfilling and hugely enjoyable part of my life. It didn't make my fortune, but hey, who needs a fortune when you're having fun instead?

Life moved on, and things changed. My tiny company is now part of a much bigger one; the name lives on, and crime fiction is still the focus, but the new authors part had to go when I sold up, which saddened but didn't surprise me. I still edit a book or two a year for them – and I'm proud to say that the author I edit most is one I 'discovered' way back then. His name will be familiar; it's appeared over Thursday posts more often than mine during the past few weeks! A big thank-you to my good friend Chris Nickson, partly for being a great writer, and also for being ready and willing to pick up the pieces when the ball has slipped out of my hands.

So yes, movement and change – but crime fiction still plays a large part in my life. I haven't published it for seven years, but I still edit it and review it, and when I'm doing neither of those things I read it voraciously. But if you've paid more than a couple of visits to this blog, you'll know that. So there's another thank-you, to loyal blog-followers, some of who have taken the trouble to comment on my pearls of dubious wisdom.

And now for the biggest thank-you of all. There have been many Dead Guys over the years, and I've enjoyed and gained something from their posts without exception. I've even met a few face to face. Bouchercon 2009 was great fun thanks to a few now departed members, and Chatsworth 2013 was a lovely day; thank you, Marilyn. But most of all – Jeff Cohen, stand up and be counted. This man, ladies and gentlemen, is a prize beyond price. (OK, you can sit down now, and hide your red face.) Not only are his books guaranteed to make me smile; he also seems to have a handle on whatever cyber-glitch has caused me to tear my hair – and there have been a few!

I shall miss writing my Thursday blog posts; even on the weeks when I stared at a blank screen and couldn't think of a thing to say, something eventually appeared up there. I don't have an alternative blog to direct you to; my uneasy relationship with anything technological will not have passed unnoticed, and anyway, I no longer have anything I need to tell people about. So – goodbye, thank you, and to anyone who cares enough, don't lose touch. It's been a good ten years.

A year in books - part two

It's the winter solstice today: one of many days of celebration which fall around this time of year. And don't we need something to lift the December gloom! I think that's kind of the point: something to look forward to and lift the spirits at a time when the weather seems determined to frustrate plans and good intentions and winter seems set to go on and on and on. Or if you prefer a more positive view, we could look on the days when it's gloomy at best, snowy or foggy at worst and hardly seems to get light at all as an excuse to curl up in a favourite chair with the latest in a series of good books. Let's go with the second option, with a nod to the celebratory aspect of the first. Christmas is my family's midwinter celebration of choice, and top of the gift list you'll find, yes, you guessed, more good books. Which segués neatly into the remainder of my top twelve picks of the year that's almost gone. Numbers eight through to one coming up, with the same rider as last week: the differences in quality and enjoyment factor are infinitesmal, and every one is a winner.

Coming in at number eight is A Life to Kill by Matthew Hall. Finding a new series character to follow always gives me a buzz, and since I usually make the discovery in mid-series it gives me plenty of backlist to catch up on. Jenny Cooper is a coroner, and my eyes were opened regarding what a coroner actually does. Maybe not all the time: I suspect that like most jobs it has its share of tedious routine. But Jenny gets plenty of excitement too, such as taking on the might of the military to get to the bottom of the death of a serving soldier in Afghanistan. She's a real find.

Number seven was an old friend. Harry Bingham's Fiona Griffiths series hooked me firmly four years ago, and thank goodness for the yearly top-up fix he's provided ever since. The Deepest Grave offers the usual great mystery and also digs a little further into Fiona's past – dig being the operative word this time around. Check it out; you won't regret it.

Number six... Did I mention there was a tiny cheat? This is it. It's two books. My lovely daughter handed me The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd during our burning hot holiday in August. It's technically a children's book, but then so is Harry Potter, and who cares when it's this brilliant? And that's all I'm saying, except this: Siobhan Dowd died, far too young, before she could write the follow-up, so the publishers asked Robin Stevens, author of the hilarious Murder Most Unladylike series (think Angela Brazil meets Agatha Christie) to write it instead. The result was The Guggenheim Mystery, and you absolutely cannot see the join; it's every bit as brilliant, and in style and tone indistinguishable from the original. That takes skill.

My old favourite Phil Rickman had to be in there somewhere, and Friends of the Dusk comes in at number five. What can I say? It's Merrily Watkins, and it's deliciously creepy. Please, Santa, there's a new one just out in paperback, and I've been a really good girl...

Money Tree by Gordon Ferris at number four is that rare commodity, a brilliant self-published novel – though the author has an enviable track record, so I was never in any doubt. The crime is around finance, both high and less so. Something completely different, and it had me engrossed.

And so we come to the top three. The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins is glorious eighteenth century romp from start to finish. You gotta love Thomas, and yes, Antonia Hodgson is a big wheel in publishing, but this would have made it anyway, or there's no justice. And there is justice: it happens in every crime novel I read...

Runner-up 2017 is Summary Justice by John Fairfax. The protagonist is a lawyer, and also a convicted murderer. Yeah, I didn't believe it either, but it could happen. It's the first of a series, and I can hardly wait to see what happens in book two.

And finally – fanfare, please – at number one is A Twist of the Knife by Becky Masterman. Brigid Quinn is a woman of a certain age, with an FBI past that keeps pulling at her; she's a character to root for, and I love her to bits. This is her third outing in five years, and they don't come around often enough.

That's it, folks: Lynne's top picks for 2017. Some old favourites, some new names, every one worth a look. I hope I've whetted an appetite or two.

A year in books - part one

Round about this time of year for the past few years I've begun to look back over the books I've read in the past twelve months with a view to picking out my favourites. This year I thought I'd take a slightly different approach, possibly because it's a slightly different kind of year from previous ones. This time next year there will be no Dead Guy blog to share my favourites with. That makes me a little bit sad, as I'm sure any avid reader will understand; if there's a pleasure which matches reading a great book, it's recommending that book to fellow avid readers and seeing them enjoy it too.

And so to the different approach. Over the year, if my reading log is complete, I appear to have read seventy-four books. Not a bad tally, though possibly by my usual standards not as many as usual. It's been a tough year, well laced with domestic crises; there have been far too many entire days spent visiting one sick family member and half days spent in hospital clinics with another, and neither allows for much quality reading time. But seventy-four is still a not inconsiderable haul. So I plan to pick out my top twelve. It was going to be ten, but I couldn't pare down the list any further, and there's still a tiny cheat which I hope you'll forgive. Even then, there are a few which came hairsbreadth close but didn't quite make it over the line.

I expect some of the authors' names, and possibly their work, will be familiar to Dead Guy's faithful devotees from previous lists; I have my favourites and I make no apology for it. A few of the titles may also have popped up in previous posts. No apologies there, either; if a book's worth mentioning, it's worth mentioning more than once. But looking down that final shortlist, I think there may also be a new name or two.

In time-honoured manner, I'll announce the results in reverse order, four this week and six next. At this precise moment I have no idea who my top pick will be. Exciting, isn't it?

Before I start the countdown, let me say this: the final order is based on infinitesmal differences; every single one of these books is a winner. All opinions expressed are those of me and me alone; other opinions are available, and if you prefer theirs to mine, well, you have an opinion too. Likewise if you prefer other books. Fine by me; I'm always on the hunt for good books, so feel free to recommend.

Here goes with Lynne's top twelve picks of 2017, number twelve through to nine.

Coming in at number twelve is Inspector Specter by our very own E J Copperman. Please note what I said above, about infinitesmal differences and every book is a winner. E J's books, unaccountably, don't have a UK publisher, and I have strong ethical objections to A*+^*n, so this is the most recent of his books currently in my possession, though that may soon change since the festive season approaches. I took it on holiday; it passed round the entire party, raised plenty of smiles and generally brought sunshine into our lives – and the kind that didn't shrivel the skin from your body if you stepped outdoors.

Number eleven was The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. Also a holiday read, also raised smiles. It was one of the UK's unexpected word-of-mouth successes this year: only kind-of crime fiction, but one hundred per cent great fiction.

An old favourite came in at number ten: Mark Billingham, with a standalone, Die of Shame. Mark's books are always a reliable Good Read, but every now and then the reliably good becomes way out of the ordinary. This is. There's even a brief guest appearance by our old friend Tom Thorne.

And finally, for this week at least: at number nine is The Abduction by Mark Gimenez. Ever since I discovered this author I've been on a mission to read his backlist. This is my favourite so far. He does so many things so well: kids, vulnerability, twisty plots, ambience, and above all great characters.

Next week: number eight right through to the top three. Watch this space!

Short is beautiful... isn't it?

Can someone enlighten me, please, about short stories? Why has their popularity waned so far?

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, though possibly in the days before the internet invaded our lives, there were short story magazines galore, some catering to specialist tastes including crime, others more generally targeted; they contained a dozen or more well crafted, beautifully written small gems of fiction which warmed the heart or made you think. And for pure entertainment, there were shelves-full of women's magazines which carried two or more stories each. Then one by one the short story magazines went out of business, and the women's magazines started to focus on soap plots and real-life triumph-over-tragedy stories. The market for short stories shrank, which seems to imply that the demand for them had done likewise. Nowadays the main market for short stories is competitions. It's always been there; I've even organized and judged a few myself over the years. But more recently, as the magazine side has faded, competitions seem to have raised their profile.

I do have one theory about why people don't want to read them any more, and it's not just because they'd rather play Angry Birds or Candy Crush on their phones. I think the downward slope began when television soaps kicked in. A four or five thousand word short story takes about half an hour to read: exactly the length of Coronation Street/EastEnders/Emmerdale/insert American or other soap of choice. It's a lot less effort when you come in after a day at work to kick off your shoes, collapse in a comfy armchair and point the remote at the TV for something familiar than to remember where you left the book or magazine, find your glasses and start getting involved in the lives of a whole new set of characters.

People still love to write them. A novel makes huge demands on an aspiring writer's time, and not everyone has the staying power to develop a few thousand words into a few hundred pages, especially when real life makes even more huge demands. A dozen or so pages in which the action is begun, developed and brought to a satisfying conclusion is a lot more achievable. I used to do it myself; time was when one of my short stories appeared in print every month or so. Those days are gone now; that particular muse took a hike when other things began to fill my time.

In the interests of keeping the genre alive for a while longer, because I think it's worth saving, let me ask a question. Is it possible to create a viable piece of crime fiction in three thousand words or less? And if so, is it also possible to include that essential ingredient of 99.9% of crime novels, the murder and its detection? Or is it too big an ask to set the scene, create a handful of suspects, turn the cop or other sleuth into a real human being and solve the mystery in such a short space?

Any thoughts out there?

Back from the wilderness

First of all an apology. I really thought that with a little help from my friends this post was going to appear last Thursday. But, well, technology and I simply don't get along, and somehow it didn't. So here it is now. Better late than never? Not for me to say.

And talking of friends... Sometimes things happen which make you find out who your real friends are. Things have happened big time in my life over the past few weeks, and one of those real friends has been Chris Nickson. He's finished writing a new novel, organized a launch for another, engaged in discussions for two big events due to take place in the next few months and a whole lot more besides – and he still found time to fill my Thursday Dead Guy slot five times while my own life has been more than a little pear-shaped. And he's done a brilliant job; I've made sure there was time to read his posts, and they're far more interesting than anything I could come up with. Thank you doesn't begin to cover it, but I'll say it anyway: thank you, Chris; you're a star as well as a good friend.

The undulating pear-shape seems to have settled into something a little more stable and circular, at least for the time being (though no doubt I'm invoking the wrath of the gods by daring to voice that thought) so I'm afraid you're stuck with me again. And one of the several factors which ganged up to fill my life with rush and chaos was a ton of paid work which all arrived at once (see earlier posts for what happens if a freelance isn't available/turns work down/doesn't deliver to deadline despite the depredations of Real Life), and it provided me with something rather interesting to post about. Well, I thought it was interesting; let's see if anyone out there agrees.

Some people claim that crime fiction and thrillers are formulaic. My considered view of those people is that they can't possibly be reading enough of either to come up with an informed opinion, but that's a whole other post, and not what I want to delve into today. This claim came into sharp focus the other week, when I was asked to supply feedback on a thriller.

The setting is often – I'm tempted to say usually – makes a thriller different from every other one I've read. In this case it was a world I knew little about, but it was clear from the outset that the author knew a lot. That was fine, excellent in fact; I love a book which tells me things I didn't know. There was a tad too much detail now and again, but nothing a good editor couldn't deal with. The biggest problem was the ending. Now, I would challenge anyone who tried to argue on the side of formulaic; I read a lot of crime fiction, possibly not as many thrillers but still plenty, and no two are ever alike. But there are certain conventions. Not many, but they exist, and for good reasons.

This is where I set myself up to be knocked down; feel free to throw the ball at the coconut, but be ready with some justification, because to me, what I'm about to say is stating the obvious. It's this: at the final face-off, the hero/protagonist has to take centre stage; it's up to him – or her; no reason it can't be a her – to take the bad guy down. The protagonist can't be unconscious, incapable, or worst of all, dead; it's his/her story, and s/he has to be the one to take it to its conclusion.

So, when I reached the face-off and found the protagonist played no part whatsoever, I felt cheated. All the more so because he was a great character who had developed as the narrative progressed, and surprised himself by what he achieved. The effect wasn't the climactic finish to the adventure which every good thriller deserves; there was plenty of action, but somehow it felt flat. The reason was it all happened without this intriguing guy who I felt I'd come to know, and who deserved the chance to take down a villain who had wrecked his life. He didn't need to develop brand-new fighting skills, or become a crack marksman at the eleventh hour – but he did need to be there, and even if it happened by accident, his finger had to be on the final trigger.

That's not formulaic; that's just a basic convention of the genre, and it's a genre which doesn't have many. You might just as well send the beautiful heroine off to marry someone else in a romance.

And of course now, having argued my case so strongly, I'm starting to feel a little insecure. Someone tell me, please: am I right about this? Or are there other ways to end a thriller?

Warning: contains explicit content

Every TV drama I watch these days seems to come with a warning about 'explicit content' or 'scenes some viewers may find distressing', which I have to say I find more than a little patronizing. Most TV sets come equipped with an off-switch, and most viewers know how to operate it; surely they can decide for themselves?

Fortunately publishers haven't adopted the same policy; they trust their readers to make their own minds up. And mostly, my mind leans towards just enough description to feed my imagination, and no need at all to spell out violence or other nasty behaviour in graphic detail. TV is different on that score, of course; it's all about pictures, so they have little choice about how much detail to show. And when imagination needs to be triggered to enrich a reading experience, that can actually prove useful.

I'll try to elucidate. When it comes to scene-setting, few authors think they need to spell out every detail in the way Dickens used to; many of his readers had never travelled far beyond their home village, whereas nowadays we can travel thousands of miles in our imaginations, having had images planted there by TV and film. So when it comes to explicit content, why doesn't the same apply? It's there on TV, and therefore in our minds; why not leave it to the imagination when it happens on the page?

But some authors can't do that; they feel they have to spell out the nasty stuff. For me, reviewing books can be a bit of a problem in that respect. I wouldn't choose the graphic stuff, but if it crops up I have to deal with it and still try to be as objective as I can. For instance, I've just finished a book which had a strong horror element; if I'd known about that in advance, I might have let someone else have the pleasure. The book passed the 50-page test, and I was quite enjoying it – then I reached page 120, and found myself reading very quickly, and not because I was keen to know what happened. There were a few more episodes I wanted to get past in short order, and the big climax near the end was especially horrible.

I found myself wondering, as I always do when that happens, why it was necessary to be so up-front stomach-churning. Maybe the author thought it was period detail (the book was set in the 18th century), and he needed to lay it on thick to make sure we knew he'd done his research. But I've read plenty of historical crime fiction, and mostly it was laid on thick enough to progress the story, but thin enough so I didn't turn away, and that was absolutely fine. Which, in its way, is trusting the reader, much as I wish TV producers would trust the viewer.

Any thoughts, blog-followers? Do we really need every gory detail? Or can we use our imaginations to join the dots and fill in the background colour?

A life without books

The biggest mystery in my life at the moment is what's going on inside my 94-year-old mother's mind.

One thing is certain: she can no longer hold information in her head for long enough to make reading a novel a viable proposition. Which is a huge pity, because she always loved to read, frequented her local library, um, frequently, and was always a willing recipient of books as birthday and other seasonal gifts. Not any more, alas; these days she struggles to get to the end of a newspaper article, and I'm not talking inside pages of the heavier-weight broadsheets.

And as my siblings and I prepare to pack up the apartment she's been living in and move her into a very pleasant care home (before anyone thinks badly of us for not taking her to live with us, none of the three of us owns a house which would offer suitable accommodation for her), I'm moved to ask myself, how would I cope if I couldn't read?

My house is practically lined with books. Every available wall space in three rooms out of five (I don't keep them in the kitchen or bathroom) is covered in bookshelves, and half the closet space in the fifth room is full of books too. And that's not counting the trunkload in the loft space, or the boxloads in my workroom. I've read maybe ninety per cent of them (some are husband and daughter's taste rather than mine), and I probably shan't read most of them again; mostly they're there because I can't bear to part with them. And I keep acquiring more. One of the very few things I have in common with my mother, at least as she used to be, is that a book is always a welcome gift; I'm incapable, probably at gene level, of coming out of a bookshop emptyhanded; and I review for an e-zine. So the books keep coming.

Meanwhile, my mother has always had a propensity for decluttering, and her previously bulging bookcase now contains a few ornaments and family photographs. I doubt we'll find many books in the apartment. I don't even know where they went; I just hope it was to good homes.

Me, I couldn't live like that. If I couldn't read, I might just as well not be breathing. And that's the only circumstance under which I'll be abandoning my books.

Things to feel guilty about... or not

Guilt seems to be part of some people's psyche, and they feel guilty about the oddest things. A friend fessed up the other day that she feels no guilt at all about buying a dozen bottles of wine – but if she spends the same amount in a bookshop, it tugs at her and she feels she has no right. It took a while to get my head round that, and the only explanation I could come up with was childhood conditioning about sharing and not being selfish. A bottle of wine is usually a shared pleasure, but a book is a world in which we shut ourselves away from the real world and take no one with us. Maybe we'll recommend, or even lend, the book after we've read it, but the pleasure of reading it isn't something to share. So, for people who do guilt, I suppose there's maybe just a vestige of logic there.

Me, I gave up guilt a long time ago. I came to the conclusion that beating myself up because something might be my fault doesn't really achieve a lot; much better to accept it, feel bad about it for a while, do what I can to make amends, then move on. And a lot of the time it wasn't my fault anyway, either partly or entirely. I suppose to believe in guilt you also have to believe in sin, and that's another concept I'm uncomfortable with. Sure, there are things you shouldn't do, and some people do them anyway, with or without the accompanying guilt. But a baseline of trying not to hurt other people seems pretty sensible to me (though I reserve the right to take a dig if someone takes a dig at me first!), and if I do it inadvertently, I may not like myself much for a while, but, well, see above.

And feeling guilty about reading, or buying books? I've had a good look around that psyche of mine, and I think I can honestly say that's something I've never felt guilty about in my life. Not even reading D H Lawrence, or whoever was feeding my soul at the time, instead of doing my history revision homework a week before a big exam – and boy did I get flak for that! And these days, if I had enough money in my pocket for a bottle of wine or a book and had to to choose between them, the wine wouldn't even be in the race, and guilt would be the last thing on my mind.

Also these days, when most of my reading matter is crime fiction, I struggle to get my head around the idea of crime fiction as a guilty pleasure, or worse, guilty secret. What is that about! It's a claim I've heard from people who are otherwise straightforward and intelligent – as if Reginald Hill is in some way inferior to Ian McEwan, or Val McDermid to Margaret Forster. Different, maybe, but that's all. Doesn't it depend on what you need at the time?

And as for guilt... purr-lease!

Let's get on trend

Isn't it interesting how words move on? Back in the 1960s and 70s, which, yes, I'm old enough to recall quite well, things became trendy if they were popular, or perhaps more accurately, the new big thing. There are those of us who still use the word to mean exactly that, but it kind of fell into disuse, or went out of fashion, which I suppose is much the same. And then it came back, in a slightly different form.

On trend has sort of replaced trendy, though the meaning is subtly different. And then there's trending, which I understand is a thing that happens on another thing called social media, and is therefore a concept which doesn't touch my life at all. Someone on the radio this morning claimed he never looked at social media, and when pressed, confessed that he did sometimes look at the screen over his children's shoulders. I can go further than that. I have never looked at a Facebook page, wouldn't know how to get to Twitter, and haven't a clue what things like Instagum, WhichApp and Snipchat mean.

So I suppose that makes me no longer trendy, definitely off trend and certainly not trending. But I can still use the word, albeit in the pre-technology sense which I rather hope will outlive all the trend-prone usages of it.

I'm talking about trends in fiction. Themes which keep recurring. Sub-genres which pop up, enjoy their moment in the sun, then fade away again. I'm not sure how or why it happens, though I suspect marketing has something to do with it. Many years ago I was in touch with an agent over a novel I was hoping he would represent for me. It was set in the early part of the 20th century, and a lot of it took place during, and in the middle of, the First World War. In his first flush of enthusiasm (which, sadly, never translated into a subsequent flush, and reading over the novel a few weeks ago, I understood why, though I wanted to batter him at the time) he told me, 'You've chosen exactly the right time for this; the Great War is a strong trend at the moment.'

I explained I hadn't chosen it, at least not consciously; the setting just seemed right for the story I wanted to tell. So he told me, with a note of cynicism in his voice about the huge success of another novel set in and around the same war. Now, he said, every publishing house wanted its own bestseller on the same theme. And whaddya know, a rash of novels set around the First World War appeared that year. Not mine, alas; but that's a whole different blog post.

We've seen it happen so many times. Women in jeopardy – remember that? Chicklit, and its male equivalent. Books for kids set in a magical environment – though, ironically, wasn't J K Rowling told firmly that wizards and witches wouldn't sell? Doorstop books for kids, even though anything over 50,000 words was a no-no for a long, long time.

In crime fiction there was a huge trend for serial killers not so long ago, but that is one which is inevitably becoming self-defeating. The problem with trends is that each new addition has to be a little different from what's gone before, which can mean outdoing the competition – and the only way with serial killers is to add more and more gore and bodies, until eventually the readers can't stomach any more, or worse, credibility is stretched too far. Whatever the reason, people say enough. So of course the trends come and go. Sometimes they last a few years; other times a season is all they can support.

So – what does a debut writer do? Follow the current trend, or try to predict the next one? Following is a little pointless; publishing works to long lead times, and this year's trend could easily be history by the time even the most brilliant debut is scheduled. Predicting? Isn't that a little mechanical?

The answer, of course, is to set the next trend. Become it. March out ahead of the pack, and be first with the next great idea.

Hm. Now, how do I go about that?

Indispensable?

Dare I say it's been a quiet week on the home front? If I do, the phone will ring, my mother will have had another crisis, I'll need to head forty miles over the moors with an overnight bag in the back of the car, and everything will go pear-shaped again. But what the heck, I've said it anyway, and my life is pretty pear-shaped at the moment whether or not I tempt fate.

Many years ago I chose to work freelance. It was partly because I'd always wanted to give writing a serious try and the opportunity arose when my daughter was little. Another large part was so that I could be around when she came home from school, and also work the flexible hours which suit my body clock. I am not a morning person! And a lot of the time it was fine. I took on some commitments which tied me to certain times and places, but they didn't happen every day, and mostly home and the work dovetailed.

The biggest problem was other people. I didn't go out to work every morning. A lot of the time what I was writing was speculative, so I didn't even have to meet deadlines. I worked to my own schedule. And some people thought that meant I didn't have to work at all, so was available for coffee, lunch or a heart-to-heart whenever they liked. Or even more annoyingly, that what I was doing wasn't work, but a self-indulgent hobby which should take second place to their needs. And if you're a writer, at some point in your career you've been an aspiring writer, so I kind of think you'll get exactly where I'm coming from.

Some of those people eventually got the message; others... yeah, well, it's unlikely they read this blog anyway. It still happens. It happened a few weeks ago. My presence was demanded at a meeting, arranged to suit other people's convenience. The meeting was important, but I was chasing a very tight editing deadline, and it didn't suit me at all. Nothing was said to me, but there were black looks and mutterings, and a little later I picked up that I'd been accused of seeing myself as 'indispensable' and therefore selfishly unwilling to arrange my life to suit the other people. I actually went to the meeting. I would have minded that reaction less if I hadn't.

So excuse my hollow laughter when people say I have delusions of being indispensable. It's so hard, when people have a regular salary paid into the bank, paid vacation time, health and pension benefits, to make them understand how precarious a freelance life is. It should be simple to understand: if you don't work, you don't get paid. So you have to do everything you can to make sure the work keeps coming in. Far from being indispensable, a freelancer is the most expendable person on the payroll – or more accurately, not on the payroll. And a speculative freelancer... I wonder how a lot of writers survive.

These days I do a lot more editing than writing, which means that when someone does give me some work, I can be fairly certain of a fee at the end of it. And while that money isn't essential to my survival, it is earmarked for those little things that make life a tad more comfortable. We're not just talking about holidays and my chocolate habit here. I mean things like running a car. We have a good local bus and train service, but, well, those emergency trips across the moors (see first paragraph), not to mention the regular non-emergency trips, would be impossible without it.

I learned the first rule of freelancing very early: never turn work down, because if you do it may never be there again. In my line of work, there are freelancers on every corner, and most of them have worked in-house and know the right people; there's always, always, someone waiting to take the job I reject, and the next one and the next. The second rule is deliver on time. Those same ex-in-house editors know all about deadlines, so I have to know too. There are other rules, like do exactly what the client wants, and ask just enough questions but don't hassle; but the first two are crucial, because that's how to create the best chance of repeat business. They add up to providing a reliable service: being there when you're needed, and delivering to deadline. And if you don't... well, go figure.

Indispensable? Don't I wish!

Don't Be Sad... It's Just a Blog

First: Our most fervent hopes that everyone in the path of the recent terrible storms is okay and that life will return to normal soon.

But now a bittersweet announcement: Every day here at DEAD GUY we try to bring you something that can add to your day. Most often that something has to do with crime fiction publishing, as our lineup of bloggers has been constructed to know about that category. And over the past 10 we have done our best to provide every possible viewpoint on the subject.

But, as they say, whoever they are, all good things (and the rotten ones too, truth be known) must come to an end. 

As much as we've all loved being DEAD GUY bloggers, we've agreed it's time to close the proverbial doors around here. Coming up with useful, entertaining content every day has gotten to be a little too much after all this time and we want to go out while we're still at the top of our game. 

So the December 31 post will be the last one here at DEAD GUY. While it's a little sad to think this is coming to a close, we prefer to focus on the idea that we've done good work here, people have enjoyed it, and we've kept it going since January 2007, which ain't bad. 

The cast of characters has changed over the years, but never the mission: To provide perspective on writing, publishing, reading, editing, promoting and enjoying books, mostly in the crime fiction area. We're all still committed to that concept and we'll keep expressing our opinions when we feel they're relevant. Just not here at DEAD GUY after 2017 becomes 2018. 

In the ensuing months, please know we'll keep posting as we have before, so don't tune us out of your daily web scan just yet. And along the way, we'll be hearing from some DEAD GUY alums who have graciously agreed to come back for one more visit before the lights are put out and we group-hug our way to the end of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

Keep reading. That's what this has always been about.

Sorry, guys...

I hate flunking out of a Thursday, but a crisis with my 94-year-old mother (which turned out to be a storm in a teacup) has eaten most of my day. Back next week, unless there's another.

Too darned hot!

Over this side of the pond they use the Centigrade scale these days, though those of us old enough to remember real money still double it and add thirty to make it sound more impressive. But however you count it, the temperature down in south-west France last week was off any scale I've experienced before. And if by some chance you were in the Arizona desert or the plains of Canada at the same time as I was, you'll know that's pretty hot, especially when you factor in a level of humidity those places never see. Too darned hot, as the immortal Mr Porter once put it.

Still, with a wide-brimmed hat, a pair of shades and plenty of sunblock, there was plenty to see and otherwise experience. Wine, for instance. And chocolate. Both together, on one occasion, made all the more luscious by the addition of very efficient air-conditioning. And a lovely boulangerie just two minutes' leisurely amble from the house we rented. (Even at breakfast o'clock a leisurely amble was all we could manage in that heat.) And then there was Pizza Eric, which became our landmark whenever we raised the energy to leave the town and had to negotiate the rond-points and narrow streets to get back again. (When I say narrow... think of the smallest car you ever saw and tuck the wing mirrors in; you'll just about avoid scraping the walls on either side, especially if you drive like I do.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Pizza Eric. It was really called Pizz'Eric, (you have to say it with a French accent) but we're crass Brits. It was maybe three minutes' leisurely amble. And it wasn't all pizza, though they were pretty darned good, and according to the menu there were over a hundred topping variations to choose from. They also offered brochettes, kebabs to you or me, cooked in the same wood-fired oven as the pizzas and served with fries and a generous helping of salad. Well, that took care of three evening meals. And I haven't even started on the ice cream. After the bounty of Pizza Eric, we couldn't; that was another night.

You could say it was a holiday of memorable moments, interspersed with lolling around being too hot, with a stack of great books at the ready. I got through five – well, four and half; I finished the fifth on the train journey home. I knew four would be great, because I took them with me. The fifth was a surprise, and a total delight.

The four were an early Reacher which I unexpectedly found I hadn't read; the fifth in Peter May's delicious Enzo series, which gets better and better, and I can hardly wait to read the sixth; the most recent E J Copperman in my collection, which is a long way from being the most recently published, as it's been a while since I was in the US and s/he unaccountably doesn't have a British publisher; and a Mark Gimenez, which made me exclaim, 'That's the best thing of his I've read!' just like all the others have. Every one the kind of read you don't want to end.

The fifth... One of the many manifestations of my daughter's genius is finding unexpected gems, and this one was one of her sparkliest. The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd. Technically it's YA, bordering on children's; the protagonist/narrator is just twelve years old. But it's subtle, complex, beautifully written, a great read, all the things I love about a book and more besides, like all the best books aimed at kids. It also offers a definition of Asperger's syndrome which, although I have zilch experience in that department, struck me as so perfect that I have to share it. Ted, the narrator, describes his brain as 'a different operating system from other people's'. A little like working on Unix when most people use Windows? Feel free to shoot me down in flames, Jeff, and anyone else who actually knows about Asperger's, but to me that sounded kind of right. Anyway, Ted solves the mystery when everyone else is baffled.

Siobhan Dowd sadly died before she could write a follow-up, but I'm reliable informed the characters have been picked up by another author. I'll report back; watch this space.

So now, here I am back in the good old British summer. Temperature in the mid-teens, or low sixties for us throwbacks; light rain falling outside my window; autumn raspberry crop coming along nicely. It's lovely to go away, but it's nice to be home.

PS Thanks a million to my good friend Chris Nickson for rising to the occasion in my absence, as he so often does.

Keeping it in the family

Just a quickie this week – packing to do, holiday to look forward to. Then off to the sunshine for two whole weeks. If weather forecasts are to be believed, possibly a little too much sunshine; the temperature where we're going is up in the 'Oooh, what a scorcher!' bracket and then some. But after two days of rain and a summer that seems to promise for a couple of days then retreat again, I think I'll be able to bear it.

Meanwhile... I seem to have discovered domestic noir in a big way over the past few weeks; seven out of the last ten books I've read fall firmly into this burgeoning sub-genre, and I'm liking what I'm seeing. For me, the best books are about people who leap off the page as real, living, bleeding entities, and when you add in the tension and bad-guy factor that goes with the noir part, it makes for the kind of book I want to read at a single sitting.

Hard to say which of the five was best of the bunch, because they're all different. I mentioned four of the seven a couple of weeks ago, in a slightly different context: each a great read in its own way. Since then I've added Clare Mackintosh's terrific follow-up to her gripping bestseller I Let You Go. This one is called I See You, and couldn't be more different. Family life is very much at the centre of the story, and there's a generous helping of well-researched police work (Clare used to be a police officer, so she knows about these things) and a glorious ending which turns the whole thing on its head.

Then came Obsession, a debut by Amanda Robson. This is a tangled web of two families, or two couples and their kids, who are inevitably collateral damage in this kind of book. There's a character you love to hate at first, but I warmed to her when a little more truth emerged; a lot of did-she-didn't-she as the story unfolds; and an ending that's so sad I almost forgot to be shocked by it, though shocking it certainly is.

Finally, there was Where She Went, by B E Jones. I went into this one with a big grin on my face because it's set in an area of Wales I know and love – and I was still grinning at the end, albeit a little more wryly by then. Just when you think you've encountered all the twists, all the differences, all the variations on the family-based psychological thriller theme, along comes an author with something new to offer, even in a sub-genre with relatively narrow parameters. I'm saying no more about this one. I think it comes out on top, at least on my list, and if you only read one psychological thriller this month, or even this year, I strongly recommend you make it this one.

Now I have to go and pack a few books. Maybe a spare t-shirt or two as well, and I'll try not to forget my toothbrush. But the books are what really matter.

What does justice look like?

Meriel Patrick, deputizing for Lynne

I recently re-read Thrones, Dominations, a Lord Peter Wimsey story started by Dorothy L. Sayers in the 1930s, and completed decades later by Jill Paton Walsh.

It contains this passage - part of a conversation between Peter and his crime writer wife Harriet:

"'Frivolity can give a great deal of pleasure,' he said, mildly. 'But I don't like to hear you call detective stories frivolous.'

'But aren't they? Compared to the real thing?'

'What do you call the real thing?'

'Great literature; Paradise Lost; novels like Great Expectations, or Crime and Punishment or War and Peace. Or on the other hand real detection, dealing with real crimes.'

'You seem not to appreciate the importance of your special form,' he said. 'Detective stories contain a dream of justice. They project a vision of a world in which wrongs are righted, and villains are betrayed by clues that they did not know they were leaving. A world in which murderers are caught and hanged, and innocent victims are avenged, and future murder is deterred.'"

This set me wondering: if crime fiction contains a vision of a world in which justice is done, how much does it matter what sort of justice it is?

Literature is full of sleuths who crack the case by breaking all the rules. Amateur sleuths often can't work on a case at all unless they at least bend a few rules to get access to the evidence. And we - the reading public - don't usually seem to mind this. In fact, it's often what makes a character popular.

But (unless Lord Peter is wrong, and we don't really care about justice at all) there's a delicate balance to be struck here. The detective can't operate with the same sort of disregard for the law as the bad guys, or the line between the two dissolves.

I'm still pondering exactly where I think that line lies - what's OK and what's not. So I wondered if the rest of you had any thoughts on the subject. Are there rules that should never be broken? How far is too far?

Keeping it in the family

I seem to be in an analytical frame of mind this week; maybe it's because mostly these days, Real Life seems to take up more than its fair share of time, and when I sit down in front of my computer, it's mainly to review a book I've just finished. So bear with me while I do a little analysing of my recent reading habits.

Since most fiction is about dysfunction of one kind or another, and the dysfunctional family is a feature of 21st century life whether we like it or not, I suppose it isn't really surprising that 'domestic noir' has become a burgeoning sub-genre of both conventional crime fiction (the kind with a body and a sleuth) and the psychological thriller variety (the kind with a mystery to solve, but not necessarily a murder.)

I seem to be reading a lot of psychological thrillers at the moment. I go through phases; I seem to recall basing an entire post on them a few weeks ago. But then a handful of police procedurals came my way, and my focus shifted for a while.

Well, now it's back; four out of the last six books I've read have been psychological thrillers – and whaddya know, every one of the four has involved a dysfunctional family, or a stable family which becomes dysfunctional as a direct result of the situation on which the plot hinges. The four are Give Me the Child by Mel McGrath, Exquisite by Sarah Stovell, Every Last Lie by Mary Kubica, and Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell.

It says something about the breadth of the sub-genre, and a lot about the four authors, that the family setting is just about the only thing the four books have in common, in plot terms at least. In addition, they all share great character development, an excellent sense of place, and a style so fluent I didn't notice – my main criterion of good writing. And I don't hesitate to recommend them all to any lover of something a little unusual.

Thinking back over what marketing gurus rather pretentiously call the 'reading experience', I recall something else all four have in common. Kids. Well, of course – a family isn't a family without kids. Six altogether, seven if you count a newborn baby. Different ages, and all beautifully drawn; the authors clearly have kids of their own, or spend a lot of time with them. In two of the four books, the child or children lies/lie at the heart of the story; in the other two they don't lack importance, but the plot doesn't turn on them. So there's one pretty major difference. So how else do these four very talented authors ring the changes in a way which produces four very different books which all belong to the same sub-genre of a sub-genre?

Hm. Let me think; how can I do this without spoilers? I'll try. In Give Me the Child, a hitherto unacknowledged love-child turns up on the doorstep, and creates havoc in a previously stable family. In Exquisite, a passionate relationship takes two women by surprise, and one deals with the situation far less ably than the other. In Every Last Lie, secrets start to emerge when a young, much-loved husband dies in a car crash. And in Then She Was Gone, ten years after her teenage daughter disappeared without trace, a mother is faced with a lookalike.

Four different mysteries to untangle, all asking much the same question: what the heck is going on here? OK, I suppose that's the question at the root of all crime and mystery fiction, but in psychological thrillers the answers are less straightforward. That's what makes them so interesting. The best authors of police procedurals and PI mysteries, and other kinds of murder mysteries too, know how to ring the changes too, but you always kind of know the outcome: the good guys will catch the bad guys and justice of one kind or another will befall the murderer. In psychological thrillers justice isn't necessarily the issue, and the outcome is less cut-and-dried, so the author has more freedom to twist and turn the plot.

OK, analysis over, for this week at least. Think of me next week, as I indulge myself with a spa day and relaxing massage. I'll leave my blog day in good hands, I promise.

Who, what, when, where, why?

Much as I would have loved – would still love; I haven't given up hope – to have been primarily a published novelist, over a writing career spanning ftymumble years my main source of income from the written word seems to have been from journalism. I didn't exactly intend things to turn out that way; it was simply a matter of taking the opportunities that were presented to me, and the first of those was a magazine article, closely followed by reviewing and feature writing for the local newspaper. That lasted a long time (decades, reluctant though I am to admit I'm old enough for that, since inside I'm still in my twenties) and came to an end a couple of years ago when the paper decided it wasn't going to employ freelancers any more.

I didn't stop writing fiction. Of course I didn't; nothing was ever going to stop me asking what if...? and turning the question into stories. Quite a few of them even got published, though never a novel, alas. And I don't think it's an accident that most of the published stories happened after I started on the journalism.

I had no formal training; I kind of picked it up as I went along. It was plain from the outset that the way to gather material a news item (I did a little of that too) or a feature article was to ask questions (yeah, OK, obvious or what?), and that those questions were pretty much the same in every case: who, what, where, when and why.

And whaddya know, when I was invited to teach some courses at a local adult education centre and started to analyse the process of writing in order to have something to teach, I discovered that in order to create a piece of fiction I needed to ask exactly the same questions.

OK, I know, I know; that's pretty obvious too, when you sit down and think about it. But I didn't think about it. Until then I'd been a seat-of-the-pants writer, and it seemed to be working, so I didn't ask any questions at all; I just did it.

I rapidly arrived at the conclusion that learning the craft of writing – which I never really did, until I started trying to teach it to other people – was a little like learning to drive a car. Which, coincidentally but not irrelevantly, I had done only a few years before I started to teach those courses. When you begin, you think very carefully about what to do with your hands and feet, when to press, push, turn, slow down, speed up, and, probably most important of all, stop. And after a while you stop thinking about it, at least on a conscious level; it becomes second nature, and you find you're just doing it.

I went through that process and sequence of events when I began to drive, but somehow it had passed me by when I began to write, and I arrived at the 'just did it' part without thinking about how I got there. These days, though, I think about it a little more; I review other people's books, and actively look for the who, where, what, when and why. And that has led me to another conclusion: it's all a matter of balance. When and where are common factors, and carry much the same weight in every book. Some books focus on the who; the entire narrative is devoted to working out who did the crime. In others, it's plain from the start, and the focus is on the why. Then there's the what. I finished Lee Child's Night School not long ago, and a big question from the start was what is going on here? It didn't become obvious until very close to the end, and even after it did, another what raised its head: what was Reacher going to do about it? How was he going to save the world this time?

If I wanted to wax philosophical, I could begin to muse about the way those five little words lie at the root of pretty much everything. But I'm not a philosopher; I leave that to my daughter who is much better at it than I am and has letters after her name to prove it. Me, I'm a writer. But the questions are still the same.

We're all going on a...

Or am I the only person around here old enough (or possibly sad enough, or British enough) to remember the film and therefore the song? Cliff Richard, anybody? Big red London double-decker bus? Una Stubbs being cute?

For everyone who needs a reminder, which could well be most people who happen to be reading this, the next words in the song are summer and holiday, and that's also the title of the movie. Well, I enjoyed it anyway. Mind you, I was only about fourteen at the time, which is surely an excuse for a lot of things.

I mention it merely in passing, and because, having had to cancel our last two summer holidays because of medical issues in the family (not me; I'm in rude health. It's just other people who are falling apart around me), we're now in serious danger of actually getting away to the sun at some point in the next few weeks.

Which means, of course, that I need to think about my holiday reading matter. No one who has dipped into this blog over the past few years will be surprised to learn I don't own an e-reader, and have no plans to change that state of affairs. So when I depart for my preferably annual R & R, there's always a trade-off between books and clothes. Fortunately we don't opt for the kind of holidays which, and I'm not the kind of person who, require(s) twelve pairs of shoes and a change of wardrobe for every day; as long as there's a washing machine on hand I'm fine with some sandals, a few t-shirts, a pair of shorts and one nice dress for the evenings. So there's plenty of room for the essentials.

So which essentials am I going to choose? My to-be-read shelves currently hold about fifteen books. Most of them are crime fiction (natch!); a few aren't. And then there are the books I receive for review, of which I'll probably take at least one. That's the unknown quantity: the surprise treat, if experience is any criterion. I'll also need several more. So which ones shall I save?

A recent visit to a very large London bookshop yielded up some unexpected goodies, including one titled The Guilty One by Sophie Littlefield. I read one of hers for review a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it a lot, so it was her name on the cover that drew my eyes. The premise is intriguing and I'm curious: murderer's father wants to atone for the kid's sins in a rather dramatic way. So that one starts the pile off.

Close by on the shelf is the newest in my extensive collection of J D Robbs: Apprentice in Death. I'm lagging behind; two more have come out since this one. My excuse is that paperback editions take longer to arrive in the UK. No need for the curiosity factor with this one; I know I'll love it, so it definitely goes into the pile.

Another of my favourite authors is Peter May. I especially like his Enzo McLeod series, set mainly in one of my favourite parts of France; and since the proposed holiday will almost certainly – no, make that definitely – be in France, though possibly not quite that part this time, the one I haven't read yet would seem to be an appropriate choice.

One criterion for my book choices is would the others like it? I habitually holiday with three other people (husband, daughter and friend), and we like to share our books around so we get even more options. I think the above choices score two out of three; the others haven't discovered J D Robb yet, and I'm so far along the series that they'd miss out on a lot if they started with Apprentice. But two, and possibly a third depending on the review book, gives them options too. So I think I'll leave it there, and wait to see what goodies they offer in return.

But if anyone has a suggestion, feel free. I'm not going anywhere till next month.

Language, please!

No, no that kind of language. Well, not only that kind of language. This isn't a diatribe against the use of four-letter words in fiction; sometimes they're appropriate. And that's my point – appropriate language.

'Voice' is a word that gets used a lot in creative writing classes and workshops. I use it myself, and I'm not apologizing. As a copy-editor, which I am some of the time, I have to take great care that my tidying up of the prose an author uses doesn't have an adverse effect on the unique 'voices' of either the author or the characters.

And of course creating that voice, or those voices, is all a matter of the language the author uses. Sometimes those 'bad' words are part of it. Don't you find, though, that sometimes there's so much of it that it leaves you a little numb? One of the things a copy-editor has to look out for is repetition: over-use of a word, or two or three instances of the same word in a paragraph or half a page when it's clearly not done for effect. Over-use of the f-word soon becomes plain tedious, and loses the impact it is surely intended to have.

Unless it's done for effect, of course. One of the funniest short stories I ever read had the f-word on every line, and it worked, because it was deliberate, and – that word again – appropriate.

But that's not really how I meant to approach this topic. It came about because something reminded me of a talk I once attended by a well-known and successful author of historical fiction, mostly set in mediaeval England. She took questions at the end, and someone asked where she stood on the two points of view about the use of language: was she an advocate of the 'gadzooks' style, or did she take the view that to historical characters they way they spoke would have sounded natural, so authors should use updated language that sounds natural to the reader? She agreed that both were valid approaches, and placed herself on the 'language of the time' side, though she strongly denied (not without humour) that she would ever use the word 'gadzooks'. But then she said something like this: 'It's important to reproduce the language that would have been in use in the characters' world, in order to fix that world in the reader's mind.'

A kind of buzz went round the room. The questioner stood up again, and began to read from a copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in the original 14th century Middle English. 'Is that what you mean?' she asked, after a few sentences.

Hm. Ever tried to read Chaucer in the original? Point made, I think; it certainly was that day. That was one red-faced author of historical fiction.

So – gadzooks or not, how do you 'reproduce' that language? I recently read The Witchfinder's Sister, by Beth Underdown, set a century or two later than our friend Chaucer, but still at a time when the language in common use wasn't exactly user-friendly to 21st century readers. She captures a flavour without going overboard. Likewise my good friend Chris Nickson, whose John the Carpenter trilogy is set in Chaucer's century; the language is simple, devoid of images and references which simply wouldn't have occurred at the time, and feels right, even though it bears little resemblance to the way people would actually have spoken in the 14th century.

So there you have it: my take on it, anyway. Quite simply, it has to feel right. Dialogue has to sound like the characters it's coming from; exposition has to reflect the theme and subject matter. I'm delighted to report that in most of the books I read, it does.

Let's talk about... mavericks

The crime fiction world seems to have a large population of maverick cops. In fact, the kind of cop who follows the rules, abides by procedure, fills in the paperwork and has a stable marriage to an understanding partner to go home to is so unusual that s/he probably qualifies as a maverick now, too.

Unsurprising, I suppose. Who wants to read about ordinary, after all? Or even live it? In real life as in fiction, the slightly off-centre people, the black sheep, the unconventional and nonconformist, are the most interesting; likewise, procedure and paperwork aren't ever going to make gripping fiction, however important they are to solving real crimes.

I've encountered more than a few mavericks in my extensive reading – and whaddya know, some of them aren't even cops. Here are a few recent ones you may like to sample, if you haven't already.

I first discovered Grace MacBride, Harley Davidson and the rest of the Monkeewrench crew a few years ago, when Patricia Lambrecht and her daughter Traci joined forces to become P J Tracy. There's now a whole series based around Minneapolis, featuring a pair of cops who (mostly) keep the rules, alongside the most talented bunch of IT geeks the bad guys are ever likely to bump up against. And like a lot of talented geeks (allegedly), they know where to find the back doors into the information the cops need, as well as the ways to make it all stand up in court. Each member of Monkeewrench is a larger than life personality with a Past. And that's all I'm saying. If you've already discovered the books, I don't need to say any more. If you haven't – why not?

And then there was... Brigid Quinn. So far Brigid's creator, Becky Masterman, has only run to three books, but the first won awards, and the others deserved to. Brigid is a woman after my own heart; she doesn't know the meaning of retirement, much less growing old gracefully. Like many Americans, so I understand, she has moved to Arizona to wind down in later life. Unlike most of them, Brigid used to be an FBI agent. And when trouble comes knocking as it does in fiction, when most sensible retirees would bar the door and call the cops, Brigid... deals with the situation. If like me you're past youth's second or even third blush but certainly haven't given up living, you'll love her. If you're not – well, you will be some day; read the books and take heart!

There's just one book, so far, about William Benson, maverick lawyer. It's called Summary Justice, and the author is John Fairfax, except it isn't really; it's a pen name for a rather better known author called William Brodrick. The backstory gave me a distinct impression that more books were planned; I hope they are, because William Benson is one of the most interesting lawyers I've ever encountered, in fiction or elsewhere, and if I'm ever up on a murder charge I want him to defend me. As well as the best at his job, Benson, you see, is a convicted murderer himself. Whether or not he was guilty... Naturally, we're supposed to believe he wasn't, but there's just a hint of a hint that things may not be exactly as they seem. Watch this space. And beg, borrow or preferably buy the book.

Which leaves us where we started: maverick cops. It's a subject on which I could keep going all day and still hardly scratch the surface, and we both have other things to do – read some books, for one. So I'll just mention two names.

Tom Thorne. He's made Mark Billingham deservedly famous on both sides of the Atlantic, and you gotta love him! He's the cop who has so much regard for putting bad guys away,and so little for keeping the rules while he does it, that rumour says there's a whole filing cabinet with his name on it at Professional Standards, the department with the thankless task of looking into cops who, well, don't keep the rules. The difference between Tom and most of their victims, sorry, cases, is that he is on the side of the angels. Very firmly.

And then there's Fiona Griffiths. Maverickest cop I've ever encountered. We can thank Harry Bingham for Fiona. I won't even attempt to sum her up, in a sentence or otherwise. Fiona is unique, in all six books. Find them, if you haven't already. You won't regret it. Or any of the above.

Something to say? Tell us a story.

Sometimes books are just entertainment. Jack Reacher, for instance. I don't think Lee Child means any of the 20-odd titles in his addictive series to exercise the reader's mind beyond the point where we try to kid ourselves we know more about what's going on than Reacher himself. They're a great read, and I can't wait for enough time to open up in my life to enable me to pick up Night School. But I read them, enjoy them, and move on to the next.

Likewise, I don't think Reginald Hill meant most of his early work to carry any deep message. I recently read Red Christmas (he was calling himself Patrick Ruell at the time, in case you're moved to go in search of it), a mere 60,000 words long, discovered by my lovely daughter somewhere in the depths of the internet. Most of the early work by the immortal Reg (don't we just wish that were true?) is out of print now, but it's out there if you know where to look, and happily Meriel does. The book was plain unashamed fun: a bunch of people holed up in a snowbound hotel for some Christmas jollity, but some of them aren't quite what they seem...

The plot of Red Christmas is one that doesn't date, and the writing and characters are as fresh as they ever were, but the book came out a long, long time ago. More recently published were Pendulum by Adam Hamdy, featuring a man whom no one believes when he insists he is a murderer's target; Coffin Road, by Peter May, in which another man wakes up to find his memory of recent events, including his own identity, completely gone; and Money Tree, by Gordon Ferris, which features a well-known journalist, disillusioned and heading down the slippery slope to alcoholism, until a whistle-blower throws down an explosive gauntlet.

These were a rather different kettle of herring from either the Reachers or those early Reginald Hills. All, on the face of it, are the stuff of riproaring high-octane thrillers, and indeed that's what they are on the surface. But under all the fast-pace action and crash-bang-wallop, they all have something to say. Something that matters. Something people really ought to be listening to.

I've often said that for me one purpose of fiction is to explore important truths, and present them in a way that makes readers think about them and get a discussion going. The entertainment factor is vital, of course; that's what draws readers in and makes them stay with the story long enough for the idea at the heart of it to reveal itself. The three books listed above are packed full of entertainment: nailbiting mystery, chases by car and other means, an occasional great sex scene (though not enough of that to be a distraction), bad guys popping up out of nowhere pulling guns and knives. All the ingredients a fan of good thrillers could ask for, in fact. But more besides. A lot more.

I can't reveal the nature of the whistle that's being blown in two of the three, because it would give the ending away; suffice to say in each case it's an issue that affects us all, and if the world doesn't start to listen soon, it will begin to head down a very steep and slippery slope with sharp rocks and boiling seas at the bottom. The theme of the third is pretty clear from the outset, so no harm is done if I say it tells us a few uncomfortable things about the international banking system.

I think what I like most about this kind of book is the way it shows writers, even (or maybe especially) writers of so called 'popular' and 'commercial' fiction to be thoughtful people with a care for the way the world works. (We knew that anyway, right?) And since that kind of fiction mostly seems to garner more readers than the more earnest literary kind, it would be good to think that the truths being perpetuated are reaching a large audience. And since change happens one step at a time, and it takes one person to take that one step, maybe we readers are making our own contribution, simply by picking up a good book.

It's all in the mind

Lynne Patrick

A stressed-out woman whose memory keeps letting her down. Another woman abused by a bullying husband, then forced into an impossible dilemma. A common theme, kind of, and very much the stuff of one of my favourite crime fiction sub-genres: the psychological thriller.

We voracious readers are at a slight disadvantage when we read something like this. Just as, in a conventional police procedural we know the good cop is going to hunt down the bad guy and bring him/her to justice, in this kind of psychological thriller we have a pretty good idea that the hero/heroine really is telling the truth and someone is working on him/her to drive him/her to the edge.

But most books seem to pass the fifty-page test – so what turns a psychological drama into an edge-of-the-seat thriller? What, in other words, keeps the reader reading – even the kind of reader, of which I am assuredly one, whose scepticism and sense of 'oh, come on, guys, really?' has been honed by hundreds of other books?

At risk of repeating an old, old story – it's the characters. Fiction of any genre, any period, any style has to be about the characters. They have to come across as real people, and the reader has to care what happens to them. It doesn't have to be obvious who the bad guys are; they often present as on the side of the angels, and are as well drawn as the real angels. But when they're finally exposed for what they are, their motives have to be clear and credible, and there has to be a sense of 'Oh yeah, of course, why didn't I see?'. Even more important, the protagonist, the one under fire, can't be a wet heap slumped in the corner; he/she (usually she) has to have a tough streak, an edge of determination, and also be sympathetic enough to make the reader want right to triumph.

The two books I've summed up in a few words above all fulfil both these criteria. They are The Breakdown, by B A Paris, and The Choice by Samantha King.

They both fit firmly into the 'domestic noir' slot, which some would say was kickstarted by Gone Girl. I'm developing quite an affection for domestic noir; it seems to reflect what goes on in real lives rather more effectively than the larger-than-life serial killer fiction and police drama that seems to be in the majority in the bestseller lists and on the front table in big bookshops. More than that: for me, one major function of fiction is to reassure me that there really are answers to tough questions and solutions to big issues, that good does sometimes come out on top and the world isn't really such a grim place after all, so I'm going to lean towards books that tell me about lives that feel real.

Because, let's face it, the real world is more than usually grim at the moment. Two out-of-the-blue terrorist attacks (aren't they always out of the blue?) in as many weeks don't leave us Brits lying easy in our beds, especially when the police start running just-in-case 'exercises' in my own quiet little market town, which I'm told actually happened earlier this week, though I didn't witness it.

My not-quite-weekly posts seem to be turning into a several-part series entitled Why I Read. Over the past few weeks I seem to have covered making friends with the characters, visiting new places, and now reassuring myself that hope still lies at the bottom of Pandora's box. It's not deliberate; it's just kind of happening. I wonder what I'll add to the list of reasons next time...

The first strawberries of summer

According to the TV weathermen, summer officially starts today. And yes, folks, I ate my first strawberry of the year this morning. The patch devoted to the scarlet beauties in our garden has been liberally festooned with green fruit for about a week; a couple of days of sunshine has reddened a few up nicely, and this morning I picked two, dug a small slug out of one (I don't like to discourage the wildlife too far, and it was very small) and enjoyed the taste of the new season.

In other news... Chatting with my daughter last night (she's visiting her aged parents for a few days in lieu of the vacation in France we were all supposed to be enjoying round about now) brought about some thoughts about themes and trends in crime fiction plots. She mentioned Ronald Knox's Chinese villain trope (see here, if I've made it work if I haven't, maybe Google it if you're interested?: Decalogue ), and it sent me into musing mode. Not about Chinese villains, particularly; rather, about what Knox really meant. We discussed it at length, and arrived at the conclusion that the Chinese part is irrelevant; the point is not to fall into cliché, by using the current bad guy, either in real life or in fictional trend, as an easy option, or worse, as a bolt-on plot which results in a resolution but carries a whiff of deus ex machina.

Meriel mentioned Isis as an example of the current real-life bad guy. In fact I've come across remarkably few instances of this appalling phenomenon being translated into fiction: two, to be precise, which is a tiny proportion considering my voracious appetite for crime fiction. And both of them were very well done, certainly weren't bolt-on plots, and had some interesting things to say as well as being damn good thriller fiction. The two books are The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe, a much underrated British author; and The Absence of Guilt by Mark Gimenez, a slightly less underrated American author of brilliant legal thrillers. Find them. Read them. You won't regret it.

So, what is the modern equivalent of Knox's Chinese villains, I wondered. That's when I realized how many of the books I've read recently seem to have child abuse as a theme. Huge quantities of evidence of this most heinous of crimes in real life have been crawling, slinking and oozing out of the woodwork in the UK for several years and in many walks of life; a major enquiry is currently in progress (as long as it hasn't gone pear-shaped again, as it has several times), and one incidence has already been turned into a major TV drama. And it keeps coming up in fiction.

Which is fine, as long as it's well done. And as long as it isn't done to death, as it were; the more of it there is in fiction, the less impact it has, and that would be seriously worrying. It's something which needs to have an impact; people need to know it's really happening, and still be as appalled and horrified by it as they are now in a year, five, ten years, in fact forever.

So, crime writers, while you're enjoying your summer strawberries and contemplating your next plot, do you think you might bear that in mind? Once a theme begins to elicit yawns and cries of 'Oh no, not again!', you not only lose your reader's attention, you also divert it from what really matters. Enough child abuse, already. In life as in fiction.

So many books, such a great show...

A million thanks to my lovely daughter Meriel for filling this space two weeks out of the last four; she does such a great job that I sometimes think I should ask her to take it on full time. What's the old saying? If you want a job done on time, ask a busy woman... Which takes nothing away from my other regular deputy, Chris Nickson, who isn't a woman but is still busy, and yet finds time to give me a week off now and again. I love you both. In different ways, of course.

While Meriel was deputizing last week, I was enjoying a little self-indulgence. Just for the record, the previous time she took it on was less conducive to high spirits; my husband had a hospital appointment. But last week I was on my way to London for the most brilliant show I've seen in years. It's called The Girls, and it's a fictionalized musical version of a real-life event that took place a few years ago. For the benefit of American blog-followers (other non-UK dippers-in are probably available), here's potted edition.

Here in the UK we have an organization called the Women's Institute, popularly known as the WI. It pops up in villages all over the country, and is generally perceived to be the preserve of conventional middle-aged ladies whose speciality is home-making. In fact it's rather more than this, and the ladies are often far from conventional, but that's how people see it. They meet weekly or monthly, and among other things they listen to visiting speakers expound on something of interest, or possibly not really of interest, and they raise money for charity.

One particular WI decided to raise enough to buy a new couch for the local hospital's relatives' room, after one member spent rather more time than she wanted to sitting on the old one because her husband was under treatment for leukaemia. And the way they chose to do it was... rather unusual. Twelve members , all of them ladies of what is diplomatically called uncertain age, posed for a nude calendar, all in the best possible taste, with their naughty bits concealed by jam-pans, iced cakes, knitting, flower arrangements and all the other things the WI is known for. They hit the headlines, sold far more than the few hundred calendars they expected, and after a few months the proceeds not only bought the couch; they paid for a whole new wing for the hospital.

Their story became a stage play, then a major movie starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters – all making yet more money for the cause. And now it's a musical. And it's wonderful: poignant, funny, uplifting, everything a great show should be. If it comes to a theatre near you, see it or miss a treat. And give generously to leukaemia research. Please.

My day in London got even better. Right opposite the theatre in which the show is being performed is Foyle's, one of London's biggest and best bookshops – so guess where I whiled away an extremely pleasant hour or so before curtain-up? And to answer Jeff's list of questions quite succinctly: for me, far and away the best way to promote a book is to bribe, threaten or cajole a bookshop to PUT IT ON THE SHELF!* I have a book wishlist which is useful when birthdays and Christmas loom, but when I'm let loose in a bookshop with some disposable income, you can pretty well guarantee I'll come out hugging at least two books I hadn't even thought of. (In this case it was three, and it could so very easily have been a dozen.) And though building a fanbase is an invaluable aid to selling books, it's important to catch the eye of the impulse buyer too. That way the fanbase keeps growing.

*Unfortunately it's not as easy as bribery, threats or cajolery; I know that all too well. But there are still a few of us who do things the old-fashioned way.

Order, order!

Meriel Patrick, deputizing for Lynne

When I seek out an author's website, the thing I'm most commonly looking for is a list of their past books in reading order. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this: when I start typing a name into Google, it's amazing how often one of the suggested searches is something like "[author name] books in order".

Most author websites are pretty good at providing this information. Some, however, are not, and I always find this rather baffling. Only the other day, I was looking at a site which featured elegant little thumbnail images of the cover art for the author's backlist, arranged in what seemed to be a random order. But I only knew this because I've read several of the books in question.

This set me wondering: did the author not think it mattered which order the books were read in? Like a lot of people, I'll often start reading a series in the middle, because I happen across something that piques my interest in a bookshop, or because someone lends me a novel they think I'll like. But if I enjoy it enough to seek out more of the same, I tend to go back to the start and work my way through methodically.

This is mainly because most of the series I love have a strong background story arc: relationships between key characters develop, or things happen in their personal lives that are as significant as the main mystery plot of each novel. Later books in the series constitute major spoilers for earlier ones. Crime writers are very adept at referencing earlier works without giving away whodunit, but it's a bit harder when it comes to the background story. Detective and sidekick can reminisce about the grisly case they investigated three books ago without naming the murderer, but if book 4 ends with a cliffhanger about whether the two of them are going to get together or part forever, and book 7 starts with them married and expecting a baby, it's fairly clear what the general trajectory of books 5 and 6 must have been.

The rise of the background story strikes me as a relatively recent phenomenon. As a teenager, I devoured Agatha Christies in whatever order I happened to come across them. A little I later did the same with Ngaio Marsh and Ellis Peters, and it didn't feel like a problem. There were elements of background story, but they were much less prominent: my impression is that Golden Age novels and those from the middle of the 20th century tend to be more focused on the puzzle, with the lives of the protagonists as not much more than peripheral detail.

To some extent, there's also been a practical shift: twenty years ago, if you wanted to read an author's backlist, your best bet was to look out for them in second-hand bookshops and libraries, and nab whatever you happened to see when you saw it. These days, you can find pretty much anything online, so it's easier to start at the beginning. Though it still takes a bit of effort: I've often heard it lamented that shops selling new books tend not to stock anything except the most recent volumes.

All the above said, I have to admit that my favourite background story arc of all time is from a Golden Age author, and that I read the books out of sequence. In fact, if I remember rightly, I first read Dorothy L Sayers' Harriet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey books almost in reverse order, and it didn't seem to dent my enjoyment of them.

So I'm left torn. Is it important to read a series in order? Does it depend on the series? What do you think?

Out of this world

Sometimes it all gets too much. Sometimes you just need to get away. And since, for the second year running, we've just had to cancel a holiday/vacation I was really, really looking forward to (family health issues – you don't want to know; I wish I didn't have to), take a guess where I go when I need to escape.

Anyone who knows me at all will have no difficulty with that little conundrum. I head straight for my bookshelves. Specifically, the ones in the corner behind the table, designated the To Be Read shelves. Every single one of the books on those shelves is guaranteed to take me somewhere else: somewhere, and maybe somewhen, other than the here and now.

And I think the ones I like best are the ones which transport me to a place I've never been, maybe never will go, into a way of life so different from anything close and familiar that it almost feels as if I'd taken a holiday/vacation there. Usually with murder included, but hey, what's life without a little excitement? So, as part of my 2017 resolution to introduce new people to books I've read, here's a small selection of the places and alternative lives I've escaped into recently.

A group of islands called Shetland lies off the northern tip of the UK; you'd think it was a calm, easy-going rural community, the kind of place you can leave your front door unlocked and the keys in the ignition of your car without fear of loss or damage. But if you take note of the way Ann Cleeves and Marsali Taylor describe it, you tread carefully and trust no one.

I'm not sure which of them started it, but they both have unputdownable series in progress. Ann Cleeves's DI Jimmy Perez is the islands' senior cop, and in each of the seven books in the series he seems to trip over at least one body, sometimes more. In the latest, Cold Earth, nature delivers the victim right at his feet, when the wettest winter in memory culminates in a landslip. Marsali Taylor's yachtswoman Cass Lynch isn't a cop at all, but bodies seem to turn up in her life remarkably often: in Ghosts of the Vikings at a country house about to be the venue of an opera recital. Both these authors bring Shetland to vivid life: its bleak beauty, characterful cottages, open spaces and wild sea, even the oil terminal and busy airport, form a background that makes the reader, this one anyway, feel she's there, with the wind in her hair and an occasional glorious sunrise.

Anything by Tony Hillerman is probably a bit of a cheat when it comes to transporting me to new places, because I've visited New Mexico, stayed in the real-life Window Rock, driven past the Shiprock, marvelled at the red rock formations and revelled in the little bits of Diné and Hopi life I've been allowed to find. But I love his books because they take me back there, and let me into a world I've always found to be touched with magic. My most recent taste of it was The Shape Shifter; Hillerman takes an image from Diné mythology and gives it a down-to-earth spin, and I loved every sentence.

Michael Farris Smith's Desperation Road took me to Mississippi, a part of the USA I haven't visited. The book gripped me, and I cared what became of his characters, but if I'm honest he didn't make me want to jump on the next plane. His small-town Mississippi was a dismal place, peopled with unhappy folk and others I wouldn't want to meet. But I suppose even that serves a purpose: it shows me that sometimes what's close to home is preferable to what an author has to show me.

Likewise A Life to Kill, the latest case for Matthew Hall's maverick coroner Jenny Cooper. Jenny was investigating a death in the military, and that's a world I've never had the smallest desire to explore. But the book also took me for the first time into the world of a coroner – and I had no idea how fascinating it could be. I thought the job was paperwork at a desk; in fact it's part detective, part investigative journalist, with a slice of grief counsellor and storyteller thrown in for good measure. Great stuff, and I'm looking forward to more, though maybe in a different environment.

That's a few of the places I've escaped to recently. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going exploring again. It never ceases to amaze me where you can go just by opening a book.

Aaaaargh!

OK, I get it. I really do, honestly. Been there, done that, understand the issues. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

It's no secret that I used to be a publisher. In a small way, yes; in fact, in a positively miniscule way compared with the giants like Penguin Random House and Hachette. But I published books; I started with a great manuscript and took all the necessary steps to turn it into a real book and get it on to the shelves in at least a few shops, properly edited, typeset and covered.

I don't think it's bragging to say that I took some trouble over it; I did everything I could to ensure that the book that stood on those shelves was the book the author had set out to write, with typos, continuity glitches, grammar trip-ups and plot holes excised. An American distributor took an interest, so the finished books were available across the water too; he was kind enough to say our production values were excellent.

Authors don't always see their own glitches; they're a hundred times closer than anyone else, hold 80,000 words of story, background and character development in their heads, and occasionally drop a ball; brain runs ahead of eyes, and they can be easily forgiven for it. That's why authors need editors, copy-editors and proofreaders – to pick those balls up and land them safely on the right side of whatever net your sporting proclivities want to call it.

But running a publishing company doesn't happen without a certain financial input. The idea, of course, is to get that input back through book sales. Mine was a tiny company; we sold some books, but we never really came out ahead, barely covered our costs, in fact, which is one reason (though only one) I'm not still running it. All the same, I didn't compromise on those excellent production values, and they were one aspect of the whole experience which I feel I can look back on with great pride. Every book had a development editor, a thorough copy-edit and at least three pairs of eyes on it for proofreading. I can't claim that not a single typo ever slipped through; one or two, sometimes more than that, slide past the most assiduous checking. But they were few and far between, and I think the authors appreciated the effort that went into making them look as good as possible. And of course, although we never came within a million miles of the kind of best-seller which pays for a dozen brilliant but unprofitable debuts, all the people who made that effort needed to be paid.

And that's why it happens. I do know publishing isn't really a licence to print money; in order to get the books out there, the publisher has to spend an awful lot of the 90% of cover price which doesn't go to the author.

All the same, the likes of Penguin Random House and Hachette, and a whole raft of others, do get the occasional best-seller which rakes in an awful lot more than its outlay; in fact they get enough of them to pay large dividends to shareholders as well as cover all those costs, and fund the books which aren't quite so successful. So why, why, why, am I reading so many books which, it if wasn't for the absence of that final polish, could be great? Some have clearly never been near a copy-editor: bumpy sentences; typos upon typos; gaping continuity errors. And why, why, why, has the development editor not given the author that most basic piece of advice?: read each sentence aloud, and the rhythm will tell you where to put the punctuation. Every published author has a great story to tell; not every published author necessarily sees his/her own errors. I know this because I do it myself; I've lost count of the times I've written an article or review, sent it off to the publication which commissioned it – then winced when I saw it in print because I was too hasty and didn't spot my own basic mistakes.

That final polish isn't just money well spent; it's the shining gold that makes a book stand out in the best possible way. Unfortunately the opposite is also true, but in a very bad way. Don't publishers know how distracting, and sometimes misleading, those stupid errors can be? And if they don't, isn't it time someone told them? Yeah, OK, times are tough and profits are down. But still...

There; rant over. No apologies. It needed to be said. Now go spot my mistakes...

Following the rules

Meriel Patrick, deputizing for Lynne

My mum's having a thoroughly deserved and much needed day off today, so you've got me instead.

I recently picked up a copy of Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, the cover of which confidently assures me that it's the last book on screenwriting I'll ever need. I haven't finished reading it yet, but the thing that most stands out so far it is how rigid everything is: there's a lot of 'You must do this' and 'It's imperative to...' and 'By page 15, this has to have happened'.

It's all very rule-based. The author's message is crystal clear: if you don't follow this pattern, your screenplay won't work. I don't know enough about the screenwriting world to know whether he's right, but it's interesting that reviews of the book are polarized. Some people laud the author as a hero, providing clear, common sense advice about the essential dos and don'ts. Others say that what he's offering is a recipe for trite, cliched, and formulaic screenplays.

Now, presumably these groups can't both be right... can they?

Crime fiction, it seems to me, is a genre with a large number of well established rules. Justice must be served, one way or another. You can mislead the reader, but there are limits to what's allowed - you mustn't cheat. Ronald Knox's Decalogue was one of the earlier attempts to codify these rules, and while one or two of these are embarrassingly dated now, most of them still represent solid good practice.

People who don't like crime fiction often seem to regard this rule-following as a bad thing. 'They're all the same!' they complain. 'The plots are just so predictable.'

The problem is that breaking the rules frequently leads to an unsatisfying story. If you cheat, then the reader feels, well, cheated. The rules exist not because some self-proclaimed authority has decided to lay down a set of arbitrary restrictions, but because countless writers and readers over the centuries have discovered that this is what works. And I assume that's also what's behind Blake Snyder's inflexible approach to writing a screenplay.

So does that mean all crime novels (and all Hollywood movies) are destined to be trite and predictable? Of course it doesn't. There are untold millions of ways of filling in the blanks - endless new takes on established plot structures, new characters to populate them with, new sub-plots to weave around them.

My mum has enthused before on this blog about Robin Stevens's wonderful Murder Most Unladylike series, featuring schoolgirl sleuths Daisy and Hazel. In some ways, these books tread very familiar territory. In the tradition of Golden Age authors, they're set between the wars, mostly in England. One book is a country house mystery. Another is a locked room puzzle, on board the Orient Express. The most recent novel happens in an Oxbridge college. Yet they're anything but hackneyed: each book offers a fresh slant on an old theme. And while the plots work because they follow the rules, that doesn't stop them from offering surprises: the first book in the series was one of best examples I've ever read of the murderer being present throughout the whole book, with a host of clues pointing in the right direction, and yet still managing to be the last person you expect.

One of Snyder's chapters is called 'Give me the same thing... only different' - which is what a film executive once said to him in a development meeting. And for my money, that's what Robin Stevens succeeds in delivering par excellence.

But even following the rules isn't an absolute, er, rule. If you know what you're doing, you can flout them to great effect. I recently came across the following pleasing little nugget on Twitter (I can't now find the original tweet, so apologies for not giving proper credit):

Some of my favourite narrative devices:
• The rule of three
• Twist endings

What I like about this is that it breaks one rule (the rule of three) in order to serve another (twist endings). It acknowledges the existence of a rule, but only in order to play with it.

Breaking the rules is fine, as long as you do it well. But ignore them at your peril.

When is a crime novel... not?

I did a quick count-up a few minutes ago, and I've read twenty-five novels this year so far. Possibly slightly fewer, possibly even more than slightly, than my usual tally, but life has been complicated over the past few weeks.

And of course, from choice and because I review it for an e-zine, I read crime fiction. So why have two of that tally that claimed to be crime novels turned out to be... state-of-part-of-the-nation novels? Litfic? Just novels about people in crisis, which is the best definition I've ever heard of any kind of fiction?

I should say my reading tastes do have a significant element of eclecticism. Terry Pratchett, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Smiley, Pat Barker all figure strongly on my bookshelves. But crime is in the majority. And I probably wouldn't ask the question at all were it not for my other life as a reviewer. Because both the novels in question came to me for review. Believe it or not as you please, it's still true. And the e-zine is about crime fiction, its authors and other related topics. And you'd think, wouldn't you that publishers' marketing people would only target a crime fiction e-zine's review pages with, um, crime fiction?

Which leads naturally to the next question: what counts as crime? I worry a little about the credibility factor when authors locate a series in a beautiful, peaceful area where real-life crime means occasional traffic infractions, and give the local cops one murder after another to solve. But crime fiction seems to demand murder. I've just finished watching the final series of Broadchurch on TV; the scriptwriter made a brave decision to make the central crime a rape rather than a murder, and though it worked in that context, I wonder how many crime novelists could get away with it.

None of which really explains why the two books I mentioned several paragraphs ago, which are clearly not crime novels and were never intended to be, finished up on my to-be-reviewed shelf. The first featured a nasty rape and some domestic violence, neither of which was the main focus. The second contained unpleasant racist vandalism, a pathetic attempt at arson, a bit of plagiarism – again almost incidental. Both were novels about the main characters, who were people at a crossroads; both were well done, rich in thought-provoking ideas and background you could touch and taste.

But I'm still at a loss to know how anyone would think they were crime novels.

Why?

First of all today, a brief personal shout-out for Tim Pigott-Smith, RIP, an extraordinary actor, who probably wasn't halfway well enough known in the USA. He was also a one of the nicest men whose path I've ever crossed. I met him twice, years ago, in the course of my work as a theatre critic and arts journalist, and found him one of the most genuine and charming members of his profession that it was ever my good fortune to encounter.

On the first occasion, he had just stepped into the driving seat of a highly respected touring theatre company; they were opening a production at a theatre I regularly covered for my local newspaper, and he naturally wanted some coverage. We had lunch together, and though the conversation did stray far enough towards the company and what he hoped to achieve to result in the feature I needed to write, for the most part we talked about our kids, who, it turned out, were much of an age, and the flaws in the exam system in state schools, which said kids were embroiled in at the time – no grandstanding, or look-at-me, just two parents with a lot of views in common.

The production he was directing was pretty damn good too. He died a few days ago, far too soon, and he will be missed. Whom the gods love...

That's my first why? Why do thoroughly nice people at the top of their game die early? Last year Alan Rickman and Victoria Wood, among others; now Tim Pigott-Smith.

Why? is a question I've been asking all my life. It's the reason I didn't study science (well, aside from getting higher grades in arts subjects, and being rubbish at maths, and not really enjoying science lessons at school.) I kept asking why? Why does electricity do what it does? Why does mixing these two chemicals produce an explosion? Why do potatoes turn green if you leave them in sunlight? I guess I never really grew out of that phase most kids go through at about three years old, and the teachers grew as impatient as my parents had. And mostly, at least at the school stage of science lessons, there are no answers: it is because it is was the best those teachers could offer. And, like a parent bellowing Because I say so!, that doesn't make any kind of sense of the world.

Arts subjects on the other hand, especially English and even more especially fiction, offer resolution. A properly crafted plot offers reasons, no matter how tricky the question or convoluted the route to arrive at them. And that's probably why, in adulthood, I naturally gravitated towards crime fiction.

I'm still asking why?, and will probably never stop; to the big questions, which change every day (like why Brexit?, and why Trump?), there don't appear to be any satisfying answers, whatever the pundits say. At the moment, my own big question is why is real life so rubbish sometimes, and why is one heap of rubbish inevitably followed by another, so that we finish up dealing with a rubbish mountain all at once? (You really don't want to know about the individual heaps which make up my present mountain – I wish I didn't have to know!) So, in answer to the question why do I read? (which is a question I've never asked, never would ask, but is occasionally asked of me) – it's simple: I read in order to escape for a while, to a place where things eventually make sense. I suppose, boiled down to basics, I read for reassurance that somewhere, at some time, such a place could exist.

That's something crime fiction offers in bucketloads. There are other requirements, of course: it has to be well written; there must be characters I can connect with; and, for me, it shouldn't be too graphic or gory. And, of course, there absolutely has to be the kind of story that grabs me and hauls me away.

Some people don't get it. My mother dismisses crime fiction as 'whodunits', delivering the word with a curl of the lip and a roll of the eyes. Needless to say, she's never read any, and has no idea what she's been missing; the best crime fiction stands up with the best of any kind of fiction, and outstrips and outsmarts most 'literary' fiction by a country mile and a half. But some people still don't get it.

And I have no idea why.

Let's talk about... commitment

Cards on the table: I'm the world's worst procrastinator. Something in my genetic make-up seems to mean I'm a past master at not putting off till tomorrow anything I can put off until next week. Which is possibly why my weekly blog posts don't get finished until four in the afternoon when I've set aside the morning to do them. Though in my defence, I think I can honestly say I've never missed a deadline. A bus, yes; a train, definitely, and embarrassingly on at least one occasion. But deadlines... maybe just one. It was in the days before e-mail (yes, there were actually days without e-mail, in case you're under 40) and I was about to fly home from Guernsey, my favourite island; I had written a feature for the local paper, borrowed a typewriter to present it properly, and was carrying it in my hand luggage. The idea was that I would deliver it on my way home, well ahead of of the 5pm deadline – but then I found myself stranded in Guernsey's tiny airport because the island was wreathed in fog. I eventually made it home after the newspaper office had closed. I did manage to find a payphone (another historical artefact) to explain, and they were very understanding, and held the space until next morning – I like to think because I'd never done it before, unlike some of their freelance contributors.

But I'm digressing. Haven't done that for a while. OK, let's get to the point. Over the years I've encountered a lot – and I do mean a lot – of aspiring writers. I've taught college courses, run workshops, attended conventions and festivals, sat on panels. And that's before I even think about publishing books, editing other books, appraising work in progress, running competitions, judging other competitions...

And through it all, I've come to the conclusion that all those people can be divided roughly into two camps: people who want to be writers, and people who write. There are also people who attend courses, workshops and conventions as a hobby, but they regard themselves as members of the second group. So do a lot of the first group.

Now, I realize that drawing these distinctions is going to make me unpopular with a lot of people, and if I've caused offence, I'm sorry. But I have to tell it how I see it; that's the way I'm made. Because the way I see it is this: people who want to be writers think about it a lot, talk a lot about waiting for inspiration, and maybe dream a little about giving up their tedious day jobs as soon as the first six-figure advance lands in the bank account. But people who write write. They all have busy lives (don't we all?), but somehow the second group carve out the time to get the words on the page. A fellow workshop-and-course runner I met at the events used to ask his participants how much time they spent writing every day. If the answer came back, as it frequently did, I don't have time to write every day, his follow-up questions included how much TV do you watch? what time do you normally go to bed at night and get up in the morning? how much time do you spend travelling on public transport?

All valid questions, when you think about it a little. I know at least two writers, one of them not a million miles from this blog, at least when aggressive pharmaceuticals aren't making him fall asleep when he'd prefer not to, who produce three or four books a year. This remarkable achievement is, um, achieved, at least by one of these writers (I don't know how the other operates) simply by writing every day, come rain, shine or earthquake, and certainly not excepting public holidays. If you do the maths, you'll see it works: a thousand words a day, every day, is three hundred and sixty-five thousand words a year, which is four novel-sized books. But procrastination is absolutely not an option.

Neither are excuses not to write. Another digression, if I may. I ran an appraisal service years ago, when such things hardly existed. (Still do, if it's called for, but these days there's one on every corner, so people have choices.) One client signed up for regular assignments, and as was my practice, I gave her a deadline as motivation, and rehearsal for when editors asked for work by a specific time. Month after month her work failed to appear by the deadline – and month after month when it did appear a week late it was accompanied by a letter three times the length of the assignment, listing all the reasons she'd been unable to submit on time. Was it me, or was there a certain dissonance, or do I mean paradox, going on there?

Being a person who writes requires a level of commitment. Putting words on paper (or screen) comes ahead of that great TV drama or the weekly night on the town with the gang. Sometimes it even comes ahead of a good night's sleep. It certainly comes way ahead of waiting for the Muse to tap you (me?) on the shoulder and pour a paean of purple prose into your/my/his/her ears. After that first magic advance arrives and writing becomes the day job, publishers are going to expect at least book every year, and the advance is where the magic ends. Getting to that stage is even harder.

And you know what? I think it might be myself I'm talking to here. Top of my bucket list is get book published. OK, girl: let's see you go ahead and do it!

It's just a date on the calendar, guys

When I looked back over the books I've read this year, it struck me that the ages of the protagonists covered quite a wide range. The youngest is, or are, since there are two who get equal billing, just fourteen years old; that's Daisy and Hazel in the latest in Robin Stevens's delicious Murder Most Unladylike series: technically Young Adult, but over-16s, even over-60s, will get just as much fun out of it. The oldest is probably in the one I'm reading at the moment: Becky Masterman's third case for Brigid Quinn, incorrigible retired FBI agent with more attitude than a long haul jet plane, who has to be sixty-plus.

The rest fall between the two, but mainly seem to occupy a fairly narrow band between twenty-five and thirty-five. It appears that the good guys in crime and mystery novels are generally (though not exclusively, as noted above) old enough to have outgrown youthful indiscretion but young enough to remain fit and active. And I suppose that makes sense, though I freely confess to a soft spot for the occasional Brigids, who can show the young whippersnapper Johnny-come-latelys a trick or two when push comes to shove – which it does, frequently, in this genre. There are always situations in which experience has the edge, but a flexible body which still does what you want it to can be a distinct advantage when the situation gets physical or requires swift departure. Though given the paucity of Brigids, maybe I should be a little surprised that more protagonists don't match the typical bookbuyer demographic – women aged between forty and seventy. When I used a gym instead of a daily walk to stop my joints seizing up, that demographic seemed to apply there too, so staying in shape isn't the problem.

Having looked over the protagonists and drawn a conclusion or two, I next turned my attention to the authors, of both books I've read and the ones still on my wishlist. And oh, what a difference. As far as I can ascertain, there isn't a single one under thirty; in fact, a substantial majority are well past the half-century mark. (And my goodness, doesn't it make you feel old if you're past that point yourself, especially when it's referred to it in those terms?)

So what conclusions can be draw from this age-gap between authors and their creations?

An obvious one is that the older an author is, the longer he or she has been producing books. True in a lot of cases. Longevity can also be a measure of success; in these fiercely competitive and ruthlessly businesslike days, an author whose work doesn't sell in sufficient quantity soon finds publishers' doors no longer open as easily. Or at all.

But maybe the most positive and encouraging conclusion I reached was this: writing needs time, and at certain junctures ordinary life has a way of filling up every waking hour and a few that should be spent asleep. Sure, well-known authors tell stories of typing with one hand and steadying a series of breast-feeding babies with the other, or spending a couple of hours at the keyboard before the rest of the world, or at least family, has emerged from slumber. But earning a half-decent living takes up hours and fills up mindspace, and trying to nurture a parallel career as a bestseller isn't always the easiest of endeavours. So maybe a lot of successful authors don't get started until the kids are launched and the mortgage is paid and there's space in the day.
The writing was never quite on hold, but now there's more room for it to expand into.

Which means there's hope for the past-the-half-century-mark late starters. All we have to do is keep a tight hold on the mindset of those late-youth characters with the physical vigour required to see off the bad guys. And who knows, maybe the life experience (dare I add and wisdom?) we've garnered over the years will find its way into their heads, and they'll get the best of both worlds.

Believe it or not

Someone once said to me that the reason she enjoyed radio drama more than the TV kind is that the pictures were better.

If I'm honest I have to say I don't listen to a lot of radio drama, mainly because it's usually on when I'm doing something which doesn't lend itself to a radio playing. On the other hand, I think the same principle could be applied to reading. Certainly, if I watch a TV or film version of a book I've enjoyed, the pictures are never the same as the ones I've conjured in my mind; sometimes that doesn't matter, but other times I'm left wishing I'd passed on the drama and stayed with my own images.

The recent TV three-parter carved out of Phil Rickman's Midwinter of the Spirit left me cold; not only did the characters look nothing like the way I'd imagined them, they also left too much out, and the result felt thin, unsubtle and a shadow of the book's richness. On the other hand, Inspector Morse, created on the page by Colin Dexter, who died earlier this week, and given life on screen by John Thaw, who died quite a few years ago, might have sunk into insignificance without his TV incarnation; instead, it inspired a lot of affection, ran for decades, and gave rise to two spin-offs. And it was great. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

There seemed to be a fashion some years ago for crime novels set in picturesque, or perhaps I mean photogenic, places; those of a cynical turn of mind might even wonder if the locations were chosen with an eye to TV adaptation. Midsomer Murders, for instance, based on a fairly ordinary police procedural series and set among the pretty villages, thatched cottages and rural landscapes which some people think is the 'real' England, celebrates twenty years on screen this year.

The focus of TV cops drama moved to grittier locales for a while, but to some extent the paradox of brutal crime in beautiful places still happens, and TV takes it further than maybe the author intended. Take Ann Cleeves's hugely enjoyable Shetland series, for example; it was originally going to be a quartet and now runs to seven titles. Those cynical folk I mentioned might connect that with the success of its TV incarnation. Ann herself once suggested that reader credibility might be stretched too far by more than four murders in an island group where crime means drunk driving and the occasional fight, but it looks as if she's allowed herself to be persuaded that people will suspend disbelief almost ad infinitum.

Me, I'm not sure. If it's written and acted well, I can enjoy both the grittier realism and the glorious landscapes, and since I read to escape, it doesn't really matter how likely it is that the murder, or kidnapping, or rape, or whatever heinous doings, could happen in that place and in that way. The Phil Rickman series takes place in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, and I have no problem believing in what happens in the books. My beef with the adaptation wasn't that location/crime paradox; it was that by the time they'd filleted out a plot, three episodes didn't leave time for what the books are really about, which is the intrinsic more-things-in-heaven-and-earth-Horatio nature of that part of the world. Inspector Morse, on the other hand, set in the splendid city of Oxford, didn't give me sleepless nights when my daughter was living in a place where, allegedly, there were four murders every Wednesday night.

So the jury's still out for me on that one. Any thoughts anyone would like to share?

The mystery that is history - take two

A significant proportion of the crime novels I read are historical – but that's not what this post is about. Well, not quite. Not exactly.

The thing is, I've also come across an interesting twist on historical fiction. Not once but twice recently, I've encountered a book based firmly in the here and now, but with a plotline which reached far back into the past. Three times, if you count a subplot involving the robbery of a prehistoric site – which was in fact all tied up with the murder that was centre-stage, so maybe not so very sub. I may have mentioned a couple of these books before, but bear with me; it really is a different twist.

One of the three came as no surprise. The book was The Chalk Pit, latest adventure for Elly Griffiths's wonderful Ruth Galloway. The series always delves into history in one way or another, because Ruth is an archaeologist, and that's what archaeologists do. This time is was bones (again a recurring theme in the series), and underground tunnels which had been there a very long time. And as books in this series invariably do, it kept me up way past bedtime because I couldn't bear to stop reading.

That robbery, and its associated murder, took place in Shetland (a group of islands off the north coast of Scotland for the benefit of American blog-followers), where in real life shoplifting is crime enough to make news headlines, but why let reality get in the way of a good story? In fictional terms the islands are a hotbed of evil-doing enough to keep two crime-fighters occupied: Ann Cleeves's DI Jimmy Perez, whose job it is to track down the bad guys, and Marsali Taylor's Cass Lynch, who seems to trip over bodies wherever she goes. I love both series, and in Ghosts of the Vikings it was Cass's turn – though Jimmy's latest case is on my to-read shelf, so be assured that violent crime is alive and well in Shetland.

The third of this interesting trio was arguably the most intriguing of all. I hadn't come across E M Davey before; in The Napoleon Complex he posits the existence of an ancient document which showed its owner how to harness certain aspects of nature in a way that bestowed great power on him or her. Mainly him, it would appear; certainly in the context of the storyline, exclusively so. We're talking Hannibal, Napoleon, Hitler, possibly Churchill and a fictitious here-and-now British prime minister here.

This novel was all the more fascinating because a lot of the evidence put forward for the continued existence of this document through the centuries came from actual written records left by actual people. The author isn't exactly a historian by profession, but he is a very enthusiastic and meticulous amateur who has clearly done his research – to the extent that he has visited every location he uses. To an open-minded reader, which I try to be, the documents he quotes from are certainly open to the interpretation his protagonists place on them. I was left wondering, omigod, what if...? And given the location they finally track the ancient text to, and current international circumstances, it wasn't a happy thought. And that's as far as I'm going with the spoilers; this is one of those books that really should be more widely read.

Since ancient murders aren't really of much interest to an overworked 21st century police force, modern-day murders chased down by modern-day law enforcement lay at the heart of all three of these little gems. But if you're looking for a different twist on an old theme, and aren't sure that historical fiction is quite your thing, you could do worse than give them a go.

Telling it how it is - or maybe how it isn't

I'm coming to the conclusion that TV crime drama has a lot to answer for.

According to franchises like CSI in the US and Silent Witness in the UK, there's a popular impression that solving crimes, especially unusual murders, isn't down to the police any more; all kinds of people from the margins of crime-solving can have a go.

Not that I'm inclined to take anyone to task over this; it makes for great drama, and seems to work equally well on the page. People read and watch TV to be entertained, after all, and the willing suspension of disbelief is all part of the fun. But it's a trend I've observed over and over recently, so excuse me if I flag up a few examples and make an observation or two about the way real life is portrayed in fiction.

Take Silent Witness, for example. Long-running franchise (they celebrated twenty years on-screen at the end of the last series) based around a team of pathologists, whose job is to perform post-mortem examinations and provide the police with evidence. The last few series have also included a forensic scientist on the team, which extends their remit more than a little, but they're still basically an evidence-providing service. Yet in the crash-bang-wallop final episode of the last series (don't they always turn the heat right up for the last one?) Nikki the obligatory glamorous protagonist and Jack the brusque but not unattractive forensics expert took on a Mexican drugs cartel and pretty well brought them down without benefit of law enforcement services.

(I should point out that the system in the UK is a little different from the US; if I'm not mistaken (feel free to correct me if I am), a medical examiner, who on the surface of it provides the same service, also, at least in some states, fulfils the function of coroner, so that digging further into the evidence and drawing a few conclusions is part of the job. And in fiction, there's often a sidekick in the police or FBI; Tess Gerritsen's Maura Isles has Jane Rizzoli, and Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta has Benton Wesley and Pete Marino. Though I'm a little dubious about whether even they would be able to handle an entire drugs empire without help.)

Fortunately, I can suspend disbelief as willingly as the next crime fiction fan, so my enjoyment is rarely spoiled by a minor detail like an unrealistic plotline. I gobble up books whose protagonists are journalists, lawyers, even a prison governor once: all on the edge of crime-fighting, and to a man (or woman – it's often a woman) three steps ahead of the police.

Police procedurals, on the other hand, seem to be veering in the direction of realism and close attention to the detail of police work. For instance, until recently I didn't even know crime analysts existed; it was a novel which made me aware of the huge role an analyst plays in the squad, following patterns, collating and laying out the evidence as it's collected, looking for parallels elsewhere. And despite the way crime-solving has often been portrayed, it's a rare detective who deals with just one case at a time. There's usually a small mountain of files in the in-tray, all requiring close and instant attention. I've read several novels lately which purport to tell it how it really is.

Real police persons are quick to point out that real police work involves hard grind and ploughing through endless irrelevant statements and details to find the tiny thread which will pull the case together, far more than flashes of inspiration and mystery witnesses persuaded to come forward at the last minute. Turning the real thing into gripping fiction can't be easy. Which is why those lawyers and journalists and even more unlikely sleuths make better stories. Add that to fiction's need to ring the changes in order to keep readers coming back for more, and the obvious conclusion is – who needs reality anyway? Isn't the purpose of books to provide an escape from it?

All the same, I do sometimes wonder if the reading public might be a little more reassured if the police solved more fictional crimes without so much help. But mostly I just go along with the story and enjoy the ride.

More things, Horatio...

Anyone who knows me at all, however distantly, must know that I have a firm belief in, how can I put this, matters beyond the reach of science.

I'm not religious, certainly not in any conventional or organized sense; in fact, organized religion of any hue leaves me wondering how its subscribers can possibly be so misguided. But as far back as I can remember, I've always had an acute sense of something out there that we're not quite getting. Maybe some people get it to a greater extent than others, but mostly it's a mystery. You might almost say the last great mystery.

So discovering an author who sees things in much the same way as I do was not so much a revelation as a relief. Like I imagine it feels to find a safe harbour after being out in a small boat in a storm. (I have to imagine that because I don't do boats unless there's absolutely no alternative, and definitely not small ones. And as for the storm – you wouldn't get me within sight of a body of water bigger than our village pond if the wind rose above force 3, and only then on foot or on four wheels.)

OK, too much information about boats. Back to that author. Who, if you've ever encountered this blog before on one of my days, you'll probably know is Phil Rickman. I've mentioned Phil in passing quite a few times, and having just finished reading his last Merrily Watkins novel but one (the new one isn't out in paperback yet), I thought this might be a good time to expand on why he's my favourite mystery author of all time, and seems set fair to remain so into the uncharted future.

I've always had a soft spot for authors who know something I don't. Let me explain. Most authors know a lot of things I don't; it's amazing what you can learn from fiction. But some authors give the impression that they have access to some deep pool of knowledge which isn't available to ordinary folk – not in an arrogant way, just kind of how it is. Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams were prime examples. Now they've crossed over to the other side, to borrow a well-known phrase, maybe they're even closer to whatever it was they drew on.

Phil Rickman freely admits – though admits is not quite the right word – that there's a lot more out there than we know about. On the acknowledgements page of every book of his I've read (which is all but the one still not out in paperback) he says something like I didn't have to make much up. The characters, yes, and some of the locations; and some of the story, especially the murder mystery bits. But where he lives, on the cusp of England and Wales, things happen.

I met him once, after seeing him in conversation with an interviewer who knew exactly what to ask and when to let him talk. He was an unassuming, soft-spoken figure, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans and quite matter-of-fact about mists into which people disappeared and fields his dog refuses to go into. Towards the end of the interview he asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed in ghosts. About a third did. Then he asked who didn't believe. Just a handful. And finally, who wasn't sure. That got the largest vote by a country mile.

Yeah, OK, most people who paid money to listen to him talk were probably favourably inclined towards his world view to begin with. But it's interesting that the don't-knows, and not the definite-yeses, were in such a huge majority. Because if that interview was any criterion, don't know, don't really understand, I just know there's something there is a far more accurate reflection of what he thinks anyway.

That's one reason I can't get enough of his books. The other, just as insistent, is far more down-to-earth: he tells a cracking good story around characters who have come to feel like old friends. You know the way some books draw you in, so that the real world retreats and when someone talks to you they have to repeat themselves several times to get through? Phil Rickman's have that in spades. Bucketfuls. Cartloads.

If you don't know the Merrily Watkins series, go find it. Please. He's not halfway famous enough.

If you've got it - use it!

Was it Graham Greene who talked about the icy crystal in the writer’s heart? That tiny bit of consciousness which stands back and observes even the most traumatic of personal circumstances, in order to store it away for future use?

A tad extreme, maybe, but show me a writer of whom it’s not true. Don’t we all make use of our experiences? Isn’t every little thing that happens to us stored away somewhere, in a notebook, a computer file or just a compartment of the brain, so that there’s raw material to draw on when we need it? I won’t apologize, either on my own behalf or for other writers; I don’t think it makes us bad people – just keen observers with imaginations that need a little fuel to get them started.

I’ve read a couple of books recently which not only illustrate exactly what I mean, but take it a step further; they appear to actively seek experiences to enrich their novels. One is by an author whose career I’ve followed closely ever since the first in her delicious series turned up in a goody bag at an event. The other is by someone whose work I’d never encountered before. I haven’t had the good fortune to meet either of them, but I’m sure they’re both perfectly charming people with at least an average supply of empathy and human compassion.

The author of the series I’ve followed since that goody bag appetizer is Elly Griffiths, and the series features Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist and one of the most (no, make that the most) normal, likeable protagonist(s) of any series I’ve ever read. (Maybe Merrily Watkins in Phil Rickman’s series is just as likeable and normal, but it’s a close run thing.) If you haven’t yet made Ruth’s acquaintance (and Merrily’s), I strongly recommend that you take steps to rectify this huge gap in your life right away.

The series in which Ruth features (the latest is The Chalk Pit) relies heavily on knowledge of archaeology. Elly Griffiths herself is not an archaeologist – but her husband actually changed career to become one, and I have it on good authority that the birth of the series and the advent of the new career weren’t completely unconnected. A prima facie of making best use of what’s available in one’s own life, wouldn’t you say? Major research source right there in the house with her; it doesn’t get much better than that for a writer.

The author I was discovering for the first time was E M Davey. His second published novel, The Napoleon Complex, puts an interesting spin on why empires rise and fall, and ‘great’ men of history such as Napoleon and Hitler achieve and hold on to power. He cites history as a lifelong passion, and though the main narrative line of The Napoleon Complex is contemporary, its roots go way back to classical times, and there’s plenty of evidence of historical research. Davey is an investigative journalist when he’s not writing novels, and digging under the surface of a story clearly comes naturally to him, as it does to his protagonists.

Another of his passions is travel; backpacking in sixty-plus countries is a track record not many people can lay claim to, and Davey doesn’t exactly choose favourite tourist spots for his adventures. Burundi, anyone? The Afghan border? Not many Holiday Inns to be found there. Quite a few of those countries make an appearance in the novel as Jake and Jenny follow the trail of an ancient artefact which wields... no, no spoilers; find it and read it; you won’t be disappointed.

Personal experience is pure gold to a writer; even the more mundane, domestic kind of life is packed with material for fiction. A good friend who was a better and more successful writer of fiction that I’ll ever be once gave me this advice: step outside your comfort zone; do something you’ve never done before at least once a week. You know what? He was right.

The mystery that is history

A surprisingly high proportion of the crime fiction that comes my way is historical, or has historical connections. My good friend Chris Nickson writes very little else; even his short series set in Seattle is set thirty years ago, and one author I asked to define historical said quite firmly, ‘History ended yesterday,’ which certainly makes the 1980s history. In fact, as an assignment on a residential creative writing course I was attending to many years ago to admit to, the tutor asked us to write a scene from history as if we were there – and I opted to write about the royal wedding which had taken place just three years earlier.

Like all fiction, historical crime is about people, and big themes which don’t really change regardless of when the illustration is taking place. Crime fiction of any colour usually means murder, and people have been getting unlawfully killed since, well, pretty well forever. So it doesn’t really matter when it happens; the how, who and where are as central as in the contemporary kind.

Individuals’ definitions aside, I suppose to most of us, history means a time before living memory, or at least before one’s own memory. Which allows the writer of historical fiction a decent amount of artistic licence. Not complete licence to make things up, of course: unless it’s the ‘alternative reality’ kind of history, there are real-life events which happened and can’t be ignored. And when it comes to background, it has to feel right. Which, taken all round, has to mean a certain amount of research as well as a lot of imagination. So today’s big question is – why? Why delve into bygone times, when there’s less drudge work involved in writing about the here and now?

Then again, for at least one historical crime writer of my acquaintance, and possibly a great many more I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting, the research isn’t drudge work at all; it’s kind of the whole point. The history comes first; it’s what they do, what energizes their little grey cells, what makes them want to get up in the morning. To them, it’s the fiction that is the hard part. I recently encountered Karen Maitland – not in a literal sense, just her work. I read The Plague Charmer, set in a mediaeval fishing village in England’s West Country in the fourteenth century. It’s an era I’m not unacquainted with; one of Chris Nickson’s several series takes place then, though some geographical distance away from Karen’s: here in my own corner of the UK, in fact.

Both Karen and Chris describe a simpler way of life than we’re used to nowadays – but there the resemblance ends between her work and his. Chris’s series follows the fate of John the Carpenter, who keeps being co-opted by the local coroner as a solver of crimes. The Plague Charmer is a hefty volume, a complex tale set in several locations and related from several viewpoints including a dwarf, a witch and a small boy, with weird goings-on and no dedicated crime-solver, though the task does seem to fall into one pair of hands when it arises. Far more than crime-solving, though, it deals with attitudes, customs and prejudices of the time.

The business of crime-solving is trickier to handle when the history which forms the background took place before the existence of specific people who played that role in society. If my reading has served me well, before policemen there were local constables; before constables came magistrates and coroners, who employed bailiffs for the heavy stuff; before them, who knows? Maybe a form of rough justice, when the people harmed by a crime took matters into their own hands. Any writers of pre-mediaeval crime fiction out there, please feel free to correct any misapprehensions on my part, and tell it how it really was. I’d be intrigued to learn where such information is to be found.

Last week I had something to rant about; today I’m in more contemplative mood, musing about something I’ve only ever dabbled at the edges of. But one thing that dabbling has shown me is that writing historical fiction, crime or not (mine wasn’t), is hard work. Anyone who does it for a living has my admiration.

There's post-truth, alternative facts, fake news. And then there's fiction.

I don’t think many people would dispute that we’re living in a strange and crazy world at the moment: a world in which reality and realism seems to have become optional, and it’s hard to know exactly what to believe. I’m tempted to say, there, told you so, that’s why I’ve always avoided social media and the tabloid press like the plague they have become. They exist in a sort of alternative universe where snap reactions seem to carry huge amounts more weight than carefully thought out argument backed by well researched evidence, and themselves seem to carry more weight than the non-sensationalist kind of journalism which makes people think before jumping in with a push-button sound-bite opinion. (I’ve always avoided mobile phones too, though I can see they might have their uses under certain circumstances; I really can’t say the same about Facebook, Twitter, celebrity magazines and all the other garbage that some people are somehow unable to live without.)

OK, I’m ranting. I won’t apologize; I haven’t had a good rant for a while now, so maybe I’m due one. In my defence, I only rant about things I feel strongly about and you’ve probably gathered that this is something I feel strongly about. You gather correctly; it worries me, and I use the word advisedly, that the media’s obsession with celebrity, sport and other general trivia means we close our eyes to things that really matter; and politicians, who are supposed to be the people in a position to do something about things that matter, are too busy arguing among themselves or thumping their own personal tubs (not to mention furthering their careers) to take notice of issues that affect a lot of ordinary folk, and will affect a lot more unless they’re addressed pretty damn quickly.

But until (or more probably unless) all of the above is no longer the case, where do we go for a reviving dose of real truth, real facts and news that actually lines up with the evidence? Dare I say – fiction?

I’ve often said that fiction is a way of illustrating truths. Sometimes unpalatable truths, but big issues often are unpalatable, at least to some people. Some books which claim to be fiction are, in fact, fictionalized accounts of a situation that exists in the real world. Some authors take a major issue, something which needs to be aired, discussed, brought into the open and dealt with, and provide a solution in the form of a heroic protagonist who is prepared to stand up and be counted. And good for them; someone needs to do it, or convenience, expediency or good old-fashioned filthy lucre will keep right on winning out. And two authors who have done it in my recent reading experience are Peter May and Mark Gimenez.

Peter May’s big issue wasn’t one which has made big headlines – but maybe it should. The bee crisis, anyone? It was there, vaguely, on the edge of my consciousness, but when no one makes a song and dance about a problem it tends to get pushed to the back of the line by more pressing matters – in this case, for example, Brexit, Trump, the refugee issue... All the same, if the bee crisis isn’t addressed in short order, none of these will matter because we’ll all be far too concerned about how to get enough to eat to keep us alive. The basic premise behind Peter May’s Coffin Road is not fiction. It’s a well-written, well-constructed thriller, which is reason enough to read it regardless of the theme; but as I read, I realized he was saying something which matters a whole lot more than which celebrity was seen in which night club wearing whose stylish designer underwear, or what a certain orange president tweeted today about something he threatened to do six months ago. Coffin Road. Read it, then check it out.

The Mark Gimenez novel was one of his all too short backlist, but the issue it explored is one which never goes away. The book was The Perk; the issue was the huge chasm that seems to exist between law and justice, and an unfortunate side-effect which he described as the law of unintended consequences. Parts of it made me cry; most of it made me want to scream with frustration.

That such an important task is left to writers of fiction is all kinds of wrong, and far too much responsibility for people who are only supposed to entertain us, but heck, someone’s got to do it! And don’t you just wish those heroic protagonists weren’t fictional at all?

Laugh, cry, think and believe

When I reviewed theatre on a regular basis, I had very simple criteria by which I assessed the quality of a show. They boiled down to five questions. Did I believe in the characters? Did it make me laugh? Did it make me cry? Did it make me think? Did it entertain me? On reflection, I suppose those same questions just about sum up real life, though maybe phrased a little differently. Are these people I’m commingling (or observing) with really who they want me to think they are? Is what I’m doing engaging my emotions? Is my brain getting enough exercise? And am I enjoying it, whatever it is?

And since books form a large part of my life, it’s not too much of a stretch – not a stretch at all, in fact – to apply the same criteria there. Especially the first. Any book I pick up has to pass the fifty-page test, and it’s the characters who carry me beyond that point – or don’t, as the case may be. Usually, I have to say, they do; I don’t often give up on a book. After that I either stop analysing and just let the story carry me along, or I pause every now and then and think, yeah, that’s how the author made that work.

So – how has my recent reading matter measured up to the five key points?

Take two books set in an environment which lies way outside my experience: What Remains of Me by A L Gaylin, and The Alibi by Jaime Raven. The location of the first was the Hollywood movie world: its darker side as well as the glamorous façade. And I choose the word façade deliberately: no one in this well-crafted psychological thriller is quite what they seem. Given that this is a staple of this kind of fiction, and my only first-hand experience of the world those characters inhabited was a bus trip around the stars’ mansions nearly thirty years ago, you’d think the author would need to work pretty hard to convince me. Suffice to say she didn’t. The fifty-page test became irrelevant at about page 20: I was hooked.

This wasn’t the first of A L – aka Alison – Gaylin’s books I’d read. She is one of those midlist authors who leave you wondering what she’s doing there in the midlist; when will she break through into the big time?

Jaime Raven had to work a little harder. A little, but not much. Her location was London’s gangland, seen mainly through the eyes of a tabloid journalist. After the huge amount of exposure the sleazier side of tabloid journalism got here in the UK a couple of years ago – phone hacking was the least of their underhand methods of getting to the story before their rivals – I was ready to believe anything about the main protagonist; though she did turn out to be unexpectedly likeable, which was partly what kept me reading. The other leading players, a gangland boss and a corrupt detective, were so far outside my purview that after a while I just accepted that people like that probably exist. A description of fiction in general, and crime fiction in particular, that rather appeals to me is life with the heat turned up. In this case to boiling point.

OK, so in those cases I believed in the characters, my credulity probably helped along by wanting to believe. Let’s look at Mistletoe and Murder, the fourth (or sixth if you count two e-shorts) in Robin Stevens’s delicious YA series featuring two fourteen-year-old boarding-school-girls in the 1930s. The two girls are writ large, with huge amounts of intentional humour, and I’m not sure we’re meant to take them seriously as people. The book made me laugh. A lot. Having read the other three, I knew it would. That was why I read it. The author has a deft and witty hand with background, and it’s easy to warm to both girls.

So with three books down, I believed, and I laughed. The Perk, one of Mark Gimenez’s excellent page-turning legal thrillers, made me cry. I won’t tell you how or why; there’s more to be said about this book in a different context, because more than anything else I read last month, it also made me think. A lot. Watch this space.

Last question: was I entertained? Yes, yes, yes and yes. (That’s yes to all four books I’ve mentioned.) All four afforded me a few hours of escapist pleasure. And we all need a little of that.

More than just crime

I’ve just read Marilyn’s post (welcome back, Marilyn; you’ve been missed) and now I’m feeling a little guilty. Appointing myself ‘designated reader’ was only a way of completing the Dead Guy chain, taking it from idea not just to bookshelf but to reader, which is, after all, the writer’s objective. I hope I haven’t left anyone else feeling the books they’re reading are out of bounds for their own posts. My intention was in any case completely self-indulgent; if there’s one thing I enjoy almost as much as reading, it’s talking about books, and blogging is just another way of talking. And in addition to that, I was hoping that when my own reading tastes become apparent, I might get some suggestions of authors I haven’t discovered yet and might enjoy. Bring it on. Please.

Meanwhile... So far this year I’ve finished six books, all of them crime fiction. Sort of. Mostly. Some made me laugh. One made me cry. They all made me look forward to the parts of the day when I can sink into my armchair, cradle my coffee mug and lose myself in an unfamiliar world.

Five out of the six left no doubt – they were crime fiction. They were plenty else as well, but there were bodies, there was sleuthing and eventually, one way or another, someone paid the price for being bad. Just one gave rise to ‘sort of’ and ‘mostly’, and surprisingly, it was by one of my all-time favourite crime writers. Which just goes to show... something.

The book was one of my Christmas treasures (thank you, lovely daughter), and the author is the sublime Reginald Hill. Lovely daughter is a dab hand at sourcing out-of-print backlist titles, and my non-Dalziel and Pascoe shelf is slowly filling up. Slowly because there are a lot of them to source; back in the 1970s and 80s he was writing under at least four names, and a dozen or more titles are still on my wishlist, even though I’ve read, and/or own, all twenty-three D & Ps, five Joe Sixsmiths and eleven standalones.

In a rare interview he once said that whenever he asked his wife whether his new novel should be a literary tome or another thriller, the answer was never in question: crime is far more fun to write about, and if writing isn’t fun, why bother doing it? But if ever there was an author who cast serious doubt on whether there should be a demarcation between litfic and crime fic at all, Reginald Hill is that author; try The Woodcutter and you’ll see what I mean.

And he started early. Earlier this month I read Who Guards a Prince, published more than thirty years ago, but give or take a bit of technological advance, as fresh as they day it came off the press. It’s definitely crime fiction; the protagonist is a policeman, there’s murder, arson, terrorism, corruption and various nasty goings-on. I loved it. The book I finished earlier this week is The Spy’s Wife. Again thirty-plus years old. But whether or not it’s crime fiction is very much a matter for discussion.

The premise is simple, and quite possibly topical at the time of writing: a spy recruited at the height of the Cold War has his cover blown, and does a runner, leaving behind his bewildered wife. The wife is the protagonist; she is completely ignorant of her husband’s other life, but has to deal with the fall-out. The story follows how she does this, and despite the odd staged accident and several suspicious characters lurking on the edge of her new life, it’s only a spy novel in the very loosest sense: far more a tale of her progress from suburban housewife reliant on a man (this was the 1970s, remember) to strong, feisty individual well able to make her own choices. Essentially it’s a novel about people – as, of course, all the best novels are, whether crime, romance or any other genre. The plot may keep you guessing, but it’s the characters who keep you reading, and maybe even more importantly, keep you coming back for more. And that is the case with every Reg Hill novel I’ve read.

So each time Reginald Hill began a new novel, it may have started out as a crime novel, but the result was invariably something rich, layered, textured and rewarding. Which is why I plan to go right on collecting his backlist.

In the middle

Looking back over what I’ve been reading since the beginning of the year, I found that all the books have something in common: they belong to what used to be known in publishing terms as the mid-list.

I say used to be known because nowadays the mid-list seems to have shrunk as the major publishing houses have grown. The mid-list used to be seen partly as a kind of proving ground – proving in the sense you might use it for bread, as well as its more obvious meaning. Series were given time to develop; authors were given time to grow. A lot of authors who are now bestsellers served their time in the mid-list before they hit the big time. I’m thinking of Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, who all published books which enjoyed a moderate degree of success before they were thrust firmly into the public eye. For a lot of actors, overnight success is a long time coming; the same applied to a lot of authors. Even the late much-lamented Reginald Hill started out there, before the wonderful Dalziel and Pascoe series took off; the early title of his which I finished this week dates back to those days. And when I glance down the names on my fairly lengthy book wishlist, the vast majority have never appeared on any bestseller list I’ve seen.

Nor have the books I’ve been reading since the new year began, or the ones lined up on my to-read shelf, though that is far from being to their detriment. Names like Martin Edwards, Mark Gimenez, Frances Fyfield, Alex Kava, Chris Nickson, Jeffrey Cohen, E J Copperman (all on my list or my shelf) bring a smile to the faces of many crime fiction lovers of my acquaintance; but for some reason which escapes me, you don’t see those names in the year’s hundred top sellers.

Does this imply that my tastes in crime fiction are middle of the road? Or does it say more about the nature of today’s version of the mid-list? More than half of the authors listed above are published by smaller, independent publishing houses. Maybe, in these days of big business and bigger sums of money floating around, that’s where the mid-list has largely come home to roost. When I was running my own tiny company, I used to fantasize about a title that would sell five thousand copies. Doesn’t sound many, does it, when you consider people like J K Rowling or James Patterson? But my tiny company is no more, at least not in the form it took in my day; go figure. Even mid-list authors need to find a significant public, and for that even the smallest of publishers needs a marketing budget. Which, alas, is something the smallest of publishers tend not to have. Great books, it seems, aren’t enough on their own any more.

But once they have a foothold, mid-list authors are survivors. I like to think that’s because the mid-list is where we dedicated crime fiction readers know we’ll find hidden gems, well-kept secrets and surprise pockets of pleasure. Browsing in bookshops can reveal these treasures; more often the first taste of a new author comes through recommendation, or in my case a review copy with an unfamiliar name in the cover. I discovered Elly Griffiths that way – a prime example of an author who began in the mid-list and captured the public imagination; and Martin Walker’s delicious Bruno, Chief of Police series, set in France’s glorious Dordogne region, which really ought to do the same; and many more besides. And having discovered them, I then go out and buy more. Which is, of course, what publishers want.

So publishers, please, if you’re listening – don’t lose the mid-list. There are plenty of readers out here who revel in it.

Books, books and more books

This may sound like hubris, but it’s actually relief. Amazingly, in the course of the past hour or so, I’ve discovered that there are two people of my close acquaintance who have even worse computer skills than I do! And last night at a ‘live’ screening of a rather good Shakespeare production, the complete stranger in the seat to my left tsk tsk-ed even more loudly than I did when the presenter invited all and sundry to ‘join the conversation’ via the dreaded Twitter! So it’s not just me. Phew.

Which wasn’t at all what I planned to post about today at all, so let’s move on. Pondering on a suitable topic in the shower earlier this morning, I thought back to last week’s post, and considered the possibility that I may now be the reader on the Dead Guy panel: the end of that from-idea-to-bookshelf chain. Self-appointed, perhaps; and certainly not in any way suggesting that the others on the panel don’t read; I’m sure they do, at least as voraciously as I do. But they all have an alternative point of view to post about; once I did too, but these days I don’t, not really. Well, maybe occasionally. But mainly reading is what I do to contribute to the progression.

Maybe because I read so much, I decided some time ago that life is far too short for books I’m not enjoying. That doesn’t apply to books I’m reviewing, of course – a commitment is a commitment, and unless it’s really, really bad, I soldier on to the end. And out of what must be close to two hundred books I’ve reviewed, there has been just one that was so bad I couldn’t finish it. A few – though only a few – have been books I wouldn’t have read in any other circumstances, and their authors don’t figure on my wishlist, but even they had their moments. The vast majority are on my shelves and I have no plans to cull them for the charity shop.

Following Santa’s generosity, I have a well-stocked shelf at the moment (actually a houseful of well-stocked shelves, but I’ve read most of those). And I still review for Mystery People, which means anything up to four, sometimes even six, books a month which I probably wouldn’t come across any other way. And I have a bookshop habit which may not be quite as expensive as the more destructive kind of habit, but is definitely at least as compulsive.

So – what have I been reading? One of the most recent additions to the shelf via that habit was The Light Between Oceans, which is only crime fiction in a loose sense, but is still unputdownable: that rare breed, in my experience of a book in the top ten bestsellers which is worth a few hours of anyone’s time. I read it back in December, loved it, and highly recommend it. Santa’s bounty included The Ambridge Chronicles: pure self-indulgence made me add it to my wishlist, it’s not crime, and it won’t mean anything to our friends across the water, since it relates to a very British radio soap which has been running for over sixty years. I’ve read that too, and loved it. My New Year began with Mistletoe and Murder, the latest in a delicious and hilarious YA series my daughter keeps supplying me with. It's set (mainly, though this time it moves to Cambridge University) in 1930s boarding school life. And my reviewing role most recently supplied What Remains of Me, by A L (otherwise Alison) Gaylin, which is definitely crime fiction, and which I gobbled up in two sittings because she's an excellent and much undersold writer.

I don’t know to what extent all this qualifies me to be a designated reader, even a self-appointed one, but it’s what I have to offer. And, in the absence of other interesting topics to post about, I’ll be posting about what I’m reading over the next few months, possibly in a little more detail than the paragraph above. I hope that’s OK with everyone. Or anyone.

And so it begins

Memo to Jeff, following his highly entertaining and nonetheless wise post on Monday: it’s not that I’m naive enough to believe that a new year means a new me, or a new world, or new beginnings in any major way. But wouldn’t it be good to have cause to believe that this particular new year could be better than the one that just ended? Or at least no worse?

Let’s dream a little. I was half-watching a TV show the other evening which invited viewers to suggest good things that might happen in 2017. They included an end to all the mayhem in the Middle East; Donald Trump showing some decency by stepping down before January 20, having realized he can’t hack it; rain in Africa where and when it’s needed, and maybe even aid deliveries unimpeded by terrorists and inefficient governments.

Yeah, right.

So far, much as it grieves me to point it out, in many respects 2017 isn’t looking much different from its predecessor. Children are still dying in Syria. Donald Trump is still... Donald Trump. Terrorism and drought are still vying for the top spot in much of Africa. But a wise person once said that if you can’t change the world, try to change the way you look at it. So dreaming aside, I’m trying to be positive in a sensible way.
Here are some good things I know will happen:

New books by some of my favourite authors will be published. (J D Robb, Phil Rickman, Chris Nickson are already in progress. Others will follow.)

Other books, already published, will become available in paperback. (Ruth Downie, Elly Griffiths, Stef Penney are on the cards. There will be more.)

Some brilliant books will come my way, through reviewing and recommendation (mostly) or pure chance (occasionally). This seems to happen regularly. Towards the end of last year I received Jane Harper’s stupendous debut The Dry to review, and a friend steered me towards The Light Between Oceans – the book, not the much-filleted version they turned into a rather trite movie – and it’s finds like these that make me confident it’s a trend that will continue.

And since all the good things that come easily to mind are book-related (and you won’t hear me apologizing for that, especially not on this blog), it looks as if my best option for dealing with the world in 2017 is to escape from it into well-wrought fiction. No change there, then.

When the Dead Guy blog was set up all those years ago (nine? ten? eleven? I’m not sure; I wasn’t there at the beginning) there was a distinct chain of crime-fiction-related activity from idea to bookshelf: author, agent, editor, publisher, publicist, reviewer, bookseller. People have come and gone, but the chain is mostly still there; I started out as publisher, moved sideways to editor when I sold my publishing house, then kind of took on a roving commission which covered editor (sorry, Terri – you get first dibs at that now, since you edit twenty or thirty books to every one of mine), reviewer and occasional bookseller. Above all, though, I’ve always been a reader, and a pretty avid one, of the world’s favourite genre. So maybe that’s my role for 2017. Books need readers, and there’s no eighth day in the week to encompass that.

Happy new reading year to one and all. I’m enjoying mine so far. Hope you are too.

PS: a question. What would happen if Donald Trump really did step down? Does anyone know?

Happy new reading year

Leftovers eaten, giftwrap recycled, TV recorded – and a stack of new books on my shelf. And still a handful of old ones to recommend. Here goes.

By July I was catching up with birthday gifts from earlier in the year, especially Death in the Dordogne by Martin Walker. I discovered this delicious series a couple of years ago. Great plotting, perfect ending, wonderful characters I want for friends, and all set in a village I’d move to in a heartbeat if my command of French extended beyond pleasantries and restaurant menus. He even provides a recipe for barbecued steak which I can’t wait to try. And I don’t even eat steak.

August brought me Fiona Griffiths. Again. Reviewing for an e-zine sometimes yields up treasure.
If you haven’t yet discovered Harry Bingham series, it really is time you did. Fiona takes the maverick cop to a whole new level. The plots of this stupendously-written, character-rich, wonderfully-backgrounded series are unbelievably complex, and on the face of it completely unlikely, but once you start reading you’ll just keep going. That’s a promise. And The Dead House is one of the best yet.

I had to wait till the end of September for Never Alone by Elizabeth Haynes (another reviewing treasure), and it took me by surprise. It has a couple of stylistic quirks which sent my oh-dear-she’s-trying-to-be-literary antennae into orbit, but before I knew it I was on page 73 and didn’t want to stop. Atmosphere, misdirection, great characters and a long-drawn-out teeth-clenching finale that never falters. What a find.

October brought another end-of-the-month unexpected treat: Her Darkest Nightmare by Brenda Novak. I was put off at first by the naff title, but as a wise person said, you can’t judge a book by its... An eye-opener to many things: psychopathy, American prisons and police service, and above all Alaska. I really don’t want to go to Alaska on holiday, especially in winter.

November’s favourite was Lamentation, latest in C J Sansom’s excellent Shardlake series. A doorstop of a book, but unputdownable, from a master of the genre. The Tudor history feels right: far more important than being right, although I suspect the first follows from the second. More important than either: the characters feel real. And you’re left thinking it really could have happened. And who’s to say it didn’t?

December kept me waiting – many books, but nothing that stood out. Then, at the last minute came The Dry, a masterly debut from Jane Harper, an Australian newspaper journalist. If you enjoy tense plotting and the kind of atmosphere that makes you think it’s ninety degrees when it’s actually freezing outside, you’ll love this.

There were plenty more, of course; it’s a poor and sad year when my reading tally fails to top a hundred, but these were the cream of the crop.
So, just three days away from a brand new year, all that remains is to wish friends and blog-followers everywhere a lot of happy new reading for 2017.

So, what have you been reading in 2016?

I have a vague memory of expressing the wish that 2016 would be better than 2015 in my final blog post of 2015. Yeah, right. 2016 has been a lousy year, both personally and internationally, and if 2017 isn’t an improvement I shall a) be very surprised, and b) find a remote corner of the known universe to emigrate to and quietly curl up in a corner and go to sleep.

But when things get tough and the tough get going, my answer is to lose myself in a good book. Of which there have been plenty over the year. Here are some of the highlights.

January was a very good month for books. I discovered Karen Rose, one of many prolific thriller writers who hadn’t come my way until Alone in the Dark , second in her Cincinnati series. It’s a hefty tome – weighs in at 600+ pages – but not a weighty read and well worth the effort and time. Great plotting, and a cast of characters you can touch and smell. In a good way.

Also The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths, the latest in her Ruth Galloway series. She’s one of my favourite crime writers; she gets better and better.

In February I rediscovered Meg – now repackaged as M G – Gardiner, with a standalone called The Burning Mind in the USA and Phantom Instinct over here. I shall never understand why this woman’s books haven’t been picked up by an enterprising maker of high-octane action movies. Great characters skid from one crisis into the next in vividly drawn locations. What’s not to keep you on the edge of your seat?

March found me comfort-reading one of my favourite authors – Reginald Hill.

Five years after the great man’s death, I’m still collecting his enormous backlist, and so far every one I’ve found has been a winner. Some authors’ work improves so much with the passing years that early titles are a tad – sometimes a lot – disappointing. With Reg Hill, the only downside is that the earlier ones are shorter. The Long Kill is a winner.

In April I rediscovered yet another favourite. Why Ruth Downie isn’t world-famous and multi-award-winning is a complete mystery. She combines wonderfully engaging characters, a sense of history and place that make Roman Britain jump off the page, neat and complex plots, and writing to die for, and the result is pure literary magic. Tabula Rasa is (or was back in April) the latest in the brilliant Ruso series. There’s another new one now – hurray!

May required more comfort-reading, and daughter provided it – Jolly Foul Play by Robin Stevens.

If you haven’t discovered this delicious YA series yet, go out and hunt it down! This is the fourth. Think Agatha Christie meets Angela Brazil. Two teenage girls at an upper-crust boarding school encounter dead bodies wherever they go: this time on the school hockey pitch during a firework display. It’s littered with midnight feasts, climbing up drainpipes, nasty prefects who dish out detentions at the drop of a textbook... If you were ever a youthful fan of 1930s school stories, or better still, enjoyed the brilliantly hilarious stage play Daisy Pulls It Off, you’ll love them. And if American blog-followers have no idea what I’m ranting about, I feel very sorry for you because you’re missing a treat.

June brought me back to once of my favourite favourites: Phil Rickman. December was the only one of his early creepy mysteries I hadn’t read; I now have the full set. OK, I know I keep banging on about him, but this man is seriously good, and even more seriously undersold. This is one of his pre-Merrily Watkins novels, and it made me shiver when I wasn’t standing back and admiring the sheer quality. Find him. Read him. That’s all I can say.

The rest of the year yielded up an equally rich crop, but I’m going to keep you in suspense until next week about those. Meanwhile, round here we do Christmas, and I’m off to play my part in the kitchen aspect of making it happen. Whatever you do or don’t do to celebrate or commemorate midwinter, have a great one.

Aaaaargh! Alternatively, Grrrrrr!

I know I’ve been missing a few Thursdays this year (thanks again for being there yet again last week, Chris), but last week I was here, fingers poised over the keyboard – until I realized that the little thingummy that tells me the broadband is working had an exclamation mark beside it. So I applied the highly technical fix my daughter told me about – switched off and switched on again – but the connection remained resolutely non-existent.

And so it remained for five days. It being the jolly old festive season, ho ho ho, I had things on my mind that didn’t involve technology. Besides, having investigated various possibilities, mainly asking husband whether or not his was working, since we use the same router, and found that it was, perfectly, I’d more or less decided the problem was that my antique laptop was about to expire, so I was steeling myself to dip into savings and invest in a new one. So for a few days I did nothing beyond checking now and again to see if it was working.

Then lovely daughter suggested that it might be worth contacting the service provider before going down the new laptop route. So on Tuesday, I did. And whaddyaknow, the problem wasn’t mine at all; it was Microsoft’s. Apparently, and anyone more techno-savvy than I am, which means everyone, probably knows this already, one of their multifarious updates to Windows 10 caused a glitch which meant some people couldn’t access broadband.

So, after what felt like an entire day spent on the phone to various helpline personnel, suddenly I had a broadband connection again. It went down again yesterday, but at least then I had a number to call.

The day turned out to be alternately hair-tearingly frustrating and hilarious, the first while it was happening and the second when I could stand back and see it from a distance. It went something like this.

Call helpline. Put on hold to await an adviser.

After twenty minutes, adviser answers and asks for details I’d already provided.

I provide details and explain the problem. Adviser offers to send me an e-mail with a link to a helpful website. Umm...

Somehow I restrain myself from throwing phone at wall, tear my hair, scream a bit and call helpline again.

Another twenty-minute wait, followed by asking for details etc etc.

This time the adviser clearly has no idea what to do, evidenced by the way she goes away several times to ask someone else for help.

Eventually she gives me another number to call.

After only a little bit of hair-tearing and screaming, I call it. Only a ten-minute wait this time, then Steve from Cardiff comes on the line. Forgive me my personal partiality, but I do find a Welsh accent extremely reassuring.

‘Oh, yes,’ says Steve, ‘that’s the Windows 10 glitch. We’ll have that fixed in a jiffy.’

And lovely Steve tells me exactly what to do, and lo and behold my broadband connection reappears. I come very close to telling Steve I’m in love with him and want to iron his shirts and bake cakes for him; husband is only a few feet away and I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

Next day it disappeared again, but at least I now had a number to call, with a reasonable possibility that the person who answered would know what to do. (He did.) And today, fingers crossed, touch wood, invoke all available deities, it was there when I switched on and has stayed put.

But isn’t it kind of worrying that Microsoft, the largest technology company in the world (unless someone knows different), with all the funding and resources they have at their disposal, can’t manage to produce a widely-used piece of software which doesn’t interfere with the few bits of technology they didn’t invent? Or did they invent broadband? I’m really not well versed in these matters. If they did, it’s even more worrying. A bit like pharmaceutical companies who invent new drugs without knowing how they’re going to react with old ones – and don’t get me started on that or we’ll be here till armageddon.

None of which has anything to do with crime fiction, of course. Microsoft getting it wrong may be unforgivable, but it’s not a crime. And my helpline experience... well, you couldn’t make it up!

One of these weeks I really will get back to posting about crime fiction. That’s a promise.

A rose by any other name...

One thing seven years as a publisher taught me was that people love to categorize. People in that context means marketing gurus and booksellers, of course, but if you look around you, I’m sure you’ll find, as I did, that it applies in many other circumstances too.

As a rookie publisher I was warned off crossing too many genre lines. I was publishing crime fiction, and staying firmly inside the lines that made a crime novel recognizable seemed to matter a lot; booksellers and librarians, I was told, need to know which shelf to place a book on, and if they’re not sure, they won’t put it on any shelf. So, since shelf appeal sells a lot of books, strong elements of, say, science fiction or erotica are not a good idea. And taking sales figures, as opposed to plain old-fashioned quality, as the main criterion, it looked rather if as if the advice was good. Pity about that in a way; the book I’m thinking about deserved better sales figures.

Extrapolating on the labels theme – someone raised an issue the other day regarding labels within the crime fiction genre. For instance, when is a police procedural not a police procedural? In this case, when it’s a psychological thriller. Yes, really. My fellow reader was reading a novel which had a police detective as its protagonist, a body in the opening chapter and an ongoing investigation as the main narrative thread – and it was labelled psychological thriller on the front cover! Which led him to pose the question, what is a psychological thriller?

My answer went something like this: it’s a crime novel in which the police don’t (normally) play a large part – in fact, there’s no professional sleuthing at all – and the protagonist, who may or may not have a past about to catch up with him/her, is spooked or scared by person, persons or incidents unknown, which, of course, are eventually explained and dealt with.

Not a straightforward police investigation of a murder, then.

That was when I started looking at a few book descriptions, and posing a question or five of my own. For instance, romantic suspense. An interesting crossing of genres if ever there was one. OK; where does romantic suspense end and fully-fledged mystery begin?

There’s an author whose books I would describe as pretty hard-nosed, with plenty of violence, ‘bad’ language and extremely nasty villains – so not at all cosy. In fact, in one of hers which I read recently, I found myself skimming over some pretty horrible torture scenes, being a tad squeamish about such things. Imagine my surprise, then, when a few days ago I discovered that she’s described as a writer of romantic suspense! OK, so a couple of lead characters usually take a romantic fancy to each other, and the books invariably include a steamy sex scene or two, but that’s a couple of thousand words out of a couple of hundred thousand! Hardly a whole different sub-genre’s-worth!

On the same subject, take Nora Roberts/J D Robb. (She is not the author mentioned above; that’s someone almost as well known, but quite different.) As Nora, she writes romantic suspense, which involves a love story with a mystery woven into it. But as J D she has a personality change. Yes, OK, Eve Dallas and her to-die-for billionaire husband get it on (phew!) at least twice in every book, but each one of the forty-three in the In Death series is unequivocally a hard-boiled police drama, with plenty of mean streets, bloody murder and fierce crime-busting. So do those glorious sex scenes make J D a romantic suspense author too? Somehow I think not.

So what am I saying here? Something like this: labels are fine in their place; people need to know what they’re buying, and people who run shops need to know which shelf to place things on. But misleading labels do no one any favours. So maybe the people who dream up those labels for books need to do a little more than dream; maybe they need to read more.

And that’s never a bad thing.

Thickening the plot

First of all, thanks to Chris Nickson for filling the Thursday space last week with his usual blend of great writing, thoughtful views and good humour. I’m fortunate to have such a good friend among published authors. Something is always happening in his life, and last week’s something was the kind of thing that must give any writer a considerable buzz. Even taking into account Chris’s reservations, it must be great to get that call. Fingers crossed the call develops into something more substantial, and that it works out well; no one deserves it more.

And while Chris was taking the reins, I was, as he mentioned, in Stratford-upon-Avon, treading the streets and breathing the air once trodden and breathed by one William Shakespeare Esquire. Well, maybe not quite the same streets – I don’t think tarmac had been invented in the 16th century – but since the house he was born in and several others connected with his family are still there and available to be visited, the town can’t have changed out of recognition.

The play we saw (you have to see a play – it’s Stratford!) was Two Noble Kinsmen, which is one of those grey areas in the Shakepearean canon. Of course it’s impossible to be sure four hundred years on whether there actually was someone called Will Shakespeare, and whether he wrote all those plays if there was, but that’s an argument for more learned folk than I will ever be. And some of those learned folk have concluded that he co-wrote several plays with a fellow playwright called John Fletcher, and this is one of them.

I wasn’t at all familiar with the play, and didn’t realize until I read the synopsis in the programme (I think that translates as playbill to my American friends) that it was based on The Knight’s Tale from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Which brings me to my Thought for the Day.

A few years ago, when ‘teaching’ creative writing courses and workshops formed part of my regular activities, one piece of received wisdom I used to find useful was the hypothesis that there are only seven basic plots. Which could go some way to explaining why Shakespeare shamelessly plundered classical myths and other sources for his.

(Crime fiction, of course, almost without exception, is fundamentally the triumph of good over evil, sometimes with something else on the side, sometimes not. Which, I suspect, is why it’s so popular. So much evil stalks the world at the moment that we all need a little comfort; reading a novel in which good ultimately wins allows us to feel a little more optimistic in the face of the bad guys who seem to think they have a right to trample over everyone else.)

A challenge I used to set the people in my classes and workshops was this: are there really only seven? Can you think of any more? And guess what – no one ever did. Amazingly, every story in the world comes down to those seven basic premises, sometimes used individually, sometimes in combination.

So, just in case anyone is actually reading this, I hereby throw out that challenge again. Here are the seven, as a quick aide memoire:

Cinderella.
Achilles.
The Eternal Triangle.
Romeo and Juliet.
Orpheus, or the Holy Grail.
Nemesis.
The triumph of good over evil.

I don’t have prizes to offer, but if you have a book to promote, I’ll gladly give it a mention next week.

The real skill, of course, is making each version of one of the seven into something different. But that’s a whole other blog post.

PS Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and anyone else who happens to be reading. I’m really, really, really glad I wasn’t in the traffic chaos our TV news showed last night, as most of America, it seemed, were heading out for the holiday weekend.